Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  “There’s a man chasing us,” Tommy said. “The man who ran the camp in Denver. The colonel, they called him.”

  “That’s why she’s so worried,” Vanessa added in a whisper, glancing over her shoulder at Patty, who was pacing at the edge of the camp. “She’s scared he’s going to catch us.”

  Bear laid a hand on the butt of his shotgun and wondered how real the danger was.

  The first and second days they worked till there was no more light. But when the sun was low in the sky on the third day, Patty called a halt to the preparations and clapped her hands. “Time for school!”

  School?

  Patty chose a slope facing the sun. The children jostled each other as they sat down in a rough semicircle on the hillside. She used a stick to draw letters, pronounce them, and had the children repeat the work with a stick at their own feet. Then she spelled some simple words. After this she drew numbers and tried to teach the older ones how to add.

  She walked around checking their work: encouraging, cajoling, and scolding. She had a hard time keeping their attention, though. The older kids spent most of their time taking turns with the infant, who whimpered incessantly, or chasing toddlers and keeping them from putting things in their mouths that they shouldn’t. The toddlers ran around, naked from the waist down, giggling, scuffing up the students’ work.

  Tom and Vanessa paced behind the students while Patty talked, and occasionally gave the rowdier students a whack across the shoulders to make them be quiet. It was Keystone Elementary. Bear rubbed his face, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Well , he thought, points for trying.

  He sat a short ways up the hillside at the class’s back; now he stood up and walked over to Tom, who had raised his stick to strike seven-year-old Jonas. The younger boy had not seen Tom coming. He was giggling after kicking dirt over little Hannah’s work and she cried and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Bear caught the stick and gave Tom a warning head shake. He pressed a finger to his lips, then caught hold of Jonas and lifted him back over to his own spot, as easily as someone else might lift a doll.

  “That’ll be quite enough of that,” he told Jonas. “Do your numbers like your teacher says.”

  He said it rather mildly, he thought, but with a look that brooked no back talk. The little boy’s reaction shocked him: he stared at Bear in sheer terror, sat right down, and started sketching in the dirt with a shaking hand. His sketch came out looking more like a tree than the numeral 9. Urine spread on the ground behind the boy’s seat.

  Bear understood, and felt sick.

  He sat next to Jonas. “It’s all right, son,” Bear said. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

  The boy leaned away from Bear, trembling like an aspen leaf.

  Nothing I say or do will make this better. Bear stood up, brushed the dirt off, and went over to Patty to put in a quiet word about what had happened. She gazed at him and gave a nod.

  “Class is over,” Patty announced. “Now Bear is going to tell a story.”

  While Bear distracted the other kids with “The Three Little Pigs,” Patty led Jonas over to get washed up and changed, before the other children noticed and teased him.

  By that third evening he had learned the names of most of the children, but couldn’t put them to the right faces with one hundred percent accuracy. (As an engineer, accuracy was very important to him.) They were all so somber. He’d never seen children so silent. To cheer them up he told them the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and acted out all the parts. They listened raptly, even the two Patty had told to take the first night shift, standing guard. They went still when he stomped about, acting out the part of the giant: Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! When Jack chopped down the beanstalk and the giant fell to his death, they all cheered.

  Later Patty sat beside Bear, next to the fire. She handed him a picture, half burned, of him and Orla. “I found it in the debris.”

  “Thank you.” He rubbed a thumb over it, rubbing the charring off Orla’s face. He tucked it into his wallet.

  “Fee, fi, fo, fum. ..” She wore a smile. “I like the magic beans, and the golden eggs.”

  “Do you know the story?”

  She shook her head. “But my mother used to tell me a different story about a giant. El Secréto del Gigante. The giant’s secret. Do you know it?”

  It was Bear’s turn to shake his head.

  “This giant too had a magical egg. It held his soul, and so the giant could not be killed. The hero had to find and destroy the egg. There was a maiden, of course, and a happily-ever-after.” She pulled her knees to her chest and her gaze grew distant and sad.

  To distract her, Bear asked, “Where did you find all these kids?” He gestured at the children now setting down to sleep around them.

  She shook her head. “The past doesn’t matter. Only the future does.”

  Bear had to smile. “Okay, so… where are you taking them?”

  She hesitated for a long time and her eyes glinted in the flames’ light as she studied him. “North,” she said finally. “As far north as we can go.”

  She fell silent, but Bear saw how she bunched her blanket between her fists. She was holding onto something big. He sat quiet, watching the flames dance through the holes they had cut in the barrel. If she trusted him enough, she would tell him. Finally she got up and threw another log onto the fire. Then she sat next to him and leaned over her rifle, lowering her voice. He had to strain to hear.

  “My parents were part of—how do you say, una expedicion?” she asked.

  “An expedition?”

  “Sí. It was a secret. A group of thinkers. Academics? Is that the word? And others who saw. They gathered all books, all data, todo el conocimiento —literature, art, science, and technical books. Like you with your food, only knowledge instead. They gathered from all over the world. They worked for many years, since the twenty-twenties, my father told me. No one knew, not even heads of government. They didn’t trust them. Instead they took money from their grants, their salaries. Just little bits, here, there. You understand?” Bear nodded. “They hid it away, combined it, and bought land up there. Up north.” She gestured vaguely northward. “They built a secret network. Peer-to-peer, my father told me. Escondido —concealed, you call it?

  “It happened over so many years. You can’t imagine. My grandfather, Papa Chu, was a founder. Thousands of people all over the world collected and stored the knowledge. When the collapse came, they would take their families and start anew. It’s on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. It’s called Hoku Pa’a. That means the North Star in Hawaiian.”

  Bear eyed her, a queasy feeling in his belly. Stuff and nonsense. More folk tales—fantasies—to keep a child from being afraid to sleep at night. But when all you have is fairy tales, it’s a cruel man who steals those from you. So he said nothing.

  She read it in his expression anyway, and shrugged. “You can believe me or not. But I know it is there. My mother told me how to find it, before she and my father left for the last time.” She tapped her head. “I’m taking the children to Hoku Pa’a.”

  “How will you cross the border?” he asked. “Canada has guards at all the major roads, and the warlords cover the land in between.”

  “We will find a way.”

  The campfire was dying down; only the dullest glow issued from the old cut-down barrel. “Tomorrow we will prepare,” she said softly, “The next day we leave. We will head up Highway 93. You must help us get across the border.”

  Bear had known this moment would come but his heart leapt like a frightened jackrabbit. He had watched them this afternoon: They had rigged harnesses for themselves out of some rope, and had attached them to the flatbed. He shuddered to think of those kids tied to that trailer, straining to pull it along. They’d be easy targets for the warlords, who kept watch in the hills approaching the border. Yet there was no way they could afford to abandon such a cache of food, water, goods, and ammunition.

  He said, “It’d be better to
hole up somewhere nearby, you know, find a well-defended place to put down roots. It gets hot as blazes in the summer here now, but it’s dry enough you can survive it. Not like the Wet-Bulb Die-Offs in the southeast.”

  She shook her head. “And do what? This food won’t last us all through next winter and the land is too dry and rocky for crops. No, Bear. No. We have to go somewhere else, where we can grow food, raise livestock. Where we have a chance to survive and make a better life. We must find Hoku Pa’a. You have to help us.”

  Bear sighed. “Patty, this is madness. It’s over two thousand miles to the Arctic Ocean from here. What are you going to do, walk all the way?”

  A smile curved her lips. “Why not? I’ve walked over two thousand miles here from La Ciudad de México”

  “I don’t think you understand. Canada has been inundated with refugees; they have a full deportation policy now. And even they have lost control of their unpopulated territory. They don’t have the resources to keep the warlords under control.”

  “And I don’t think you understand,” she said. “Nothing has stopped us yet and nothing will.”

  Bear eyed her with deep reluctance.

  Truth was, for these kids, the chances were not so good no matter which way you cut it. Sometime soon they’d starve, or be cut down by a warlord’s snipers. Or get murdered, thrown into a work camp, or made into sex slaves. Bear and Orla had survived so long because they had kept low—stayed out of sight. That suited him much better than a journey off into the unknown, where you didn’t know the terrain or who was patrolling it. Patty might have an unstoppable will, but even she couldn’t fend off with her bare hands the bullets and hatchets, that barehanded violence that would befall these kids once they stepped onto the roads.

  But Patty was right that there was not much point in staying here. And their chances of making it someplace safe were even worse without him. He knew the area; he was a decent shot and a good hunter. His many years of life experience could come in handy. And Canada was the only nation in this hemisphere whose lands had remained partially arable, and whose cities were mostly still viable. If they could get the kids across the border, maybe someone in authority somewhere would have pity on them. It was their best chance to survive. Edmonton, perhaps, or Calgary.

  And if they were going to try for Canada, Highway 93 was better than I-15 or U.S. 287. Refugees who traveled those two roads were not long for the world.

  Anyway, he thought, death by Good Samaritanism isn’t such a bad way to go.

  “All righty, then,” he said, and slapped his thighs. “I’m in.”

  As they were preparing their bedrolls, Sarah, the girl whose turn it was to care for the baby, came to Patty. She held the infant out. He hung limp in her hands. The little girl said, “He won’t wake up.”

  Patty took the baby in her lap and examined him. Her expression told Bear everything he needed to know. “Thank you, Sarah. Go get ready for bed now.”

  “Gone?” Bear asked softly.

  She nodded, lips thin. “He had diarrhea. Day after day. We tried. Nothing worked.” Her eyes glittered in the dim light of the fire and she passed her hands over them. After a silence she said, “The day he was born, it was the day his mother died. I promised her. I said I would take him, that I would protect him. But I knew even then. I knew it would be too much. No food. No water for days, till we got here. And the food was not right for him. I had hope, when we found la medicina. Pero no le ayudó.”

  She stroked the infant’s head, looking at Bear. “If I had cared for him only, and a few others, he might have survived. I hoped the children could do it…”

  “Sounds like you had to make a tough call,” he said.

  She nodded and wiped tears away. Then she swaddled the infant’s body in a clean blanket and set it on the floor away from the others. She grabbed a shovel but Bear took it. “Let me.” Tom and Vanessa jumped up to help, too.

  She took it back, and yelled at all of them, “Go to bed! You need your rest,” and strode out into the dark.

  “Mind the little ones,” Bear told them. He grabbed his pickaxe and went outside. The moon had just risen, a pale lopsided knob beyond distant veils of smoke. Patty was nowhere to be seen. He made his way to the grove where he had buried Orla.

  “You see?” he told the stone that covered her grave. “You see? This is exactly why I should not have listened to you.”

  He took out his anger on the unforgiving ground: He pummeled it with his pickaxe, blow after jarring blow. After a while, he noticed Patty standing at the hole. She picked up the shovel and dug out the soil and rocks he had loosened. Neither of them said anything. They worked hard and long, till Bear’s back ached and his lungs screamed for mercy. When they finished, the moon was touching the western peaks of the Grand Tetons, and the stars in the east were starting to fade. They returned to the barn trembling with exhaustion, and pumped well water for each other to rinse off the dirt.

  Patty finally said, “Thank you.”

  “No trouble,” he mumbled. Damn stubborn woman.

  Bear did not wake till well after sunup. Not even the children’s noisy morning preparations fully awakened him. Finally Vanessa shook him and called his name. She handed him a cup of bitter black coffee and a handful of dried apples. The barn was empty but for the two of them. The infant’s wrapped body was gone.

  “Patty says you need to wake up now. It’s time to bury Pablo.”

  He gulped down the tepid coffee and ate the apples. Then he followed Vanessa along the hillside to Orla’s grove. Everyone else had gathered there, around the deep hole Bear and Patty had dug. Patty stood at the head of the grave. They all held little handfuls of wild-flowers and grasses and twigs. Bear and Vanessa took their places among the mourners. Bear saw that the infant’s body had been laid in the hole.

  “Pablito,” Patty said, “You were very brave.” Her voice quavered. “We will always remember you.” She threw a flower into the grave and the others followed suit. “I know Pablo is with his mother now,” she told the others, and said the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish.

  “Amen,” Bear said, out of courtesy, though the days were long gone when he could take comfort from prayer.

  They rested that afternoon, and went to bed early that night. The children were all subdued. For a change they didn’t beg him for a story. But Bear sensed that this was not the first death they had seen. They had shown a quiet competence today. They knew how to say goodbye to the dead.

  After breakfast the next morning, Patty insisted that everyone take a bath. Bear said, “I thought you were in a hurry.” Tom and Vanessa thought it was a waste of water. “We’re just going to get dirty again,” the younger girl pointed out.

  “I don’t care!” Patty said. “It’s not healthy to be dirty all the time. When we can, we wash. So don’t argue.” To Bear she pointed out, “We’ll have a better chance at the border if we don’t look dirty.”

  The kids lined up and took turns bathing and washing their clothes, using water from Bear’s well, and soap and shampoo from Bear’s supplies. They ran a bucket brigade and set up a tarp near the well, so the kids could have a little privacy. Bubbles slowly spread from under the tarp, and shrieks, laughter, and splashing sounds issued forth. Patty went last. The relief on her face as she exited, combing her soaked hair with her fingers, spoke louder than a shout. The littlest ones, of course, were already dirty again, and Patty scolded them, and made them clean up again. She made them all brush their teeth, too. Everyone groaned and complained.

  “You want all your teeth to fall out? You’ll look like this!” She made gumming faces at them with her lips.

  Next they checked the kids’ wounds and sores, and treated them with Betadine and bandages. It was mostly their feet that needed attention. Bear used his hunting knife to rig sandals from the tires of his old Ford and leather bridle straps from the days they had kept horses. It took them all day. Patty didn’t want to lose another day, but when she got a look at the firs
t pair he made, she agreed it was a good tradeoff.

  Vanessa, Patty, and Tom helped. Bear taught them how to measure and cut the rubber, how to weave in the leather straps and lace them up. They were all hot and sweaty again by the time they finished, and the kids were scattered about the meadow, running about and admiring their new shoes.

  “Time to go,” Patty said. Everyone lined up. The fourteen kids who were big enough (the kids who looked to be between six and nine) would pull the tarped load. The eldest four would walk alongside with their weapons. The six littlest ones would ride in the front of the trailer. Of these, four were perhaps four or five years old. Patty put them in charge of the two toddlers. Patty told the elder four, “You mind those babies! If they get hurt and it’s your fault, I’ll leave you by the roadside!”

  They stared at her and sucked their fists. They knew she meant it.

  Bear had argued with her over his own role. He had insisted on taking the front position at the harness but she said no; she needed him to keep watch. “You have to trust me, Bear. They are strong! They can do it.”

  “How are we different than the slavers, then?” he asked.

  She gasped in outrage. “Because we feed them every day, and teach them their letters, and make sure they bathe. We are trying to save them—not rape them, not make them kill their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers!”

  She turned away, fists clenched, breathing hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.