“Which road is that, actually?” asked Paulo.
Deloit, already suspicious of trickery, squinted. “Came across out of Rangeley, the Lakes, maybe White Mountains. Beyond our control.”
“Not up from the cities?” Paulo meant up along the old 95 route, the ruined four-lane from Portland and beyond—Boston, maybe New York City too. Journeyman had heard it claimed that the Cordon themselves had wrecked the asphalt, to thwart or slow the approach of anything they lacked the firepower to repel. Ironically enough.
“If he did, he’d tacked well to the interior before getting near to us.”
“The ones that followed him, have you tried talking to them?” This was Mike Raritan. Journeyman thought: We have a government. Paulo and Mike are our government. Today.
“It’s not talking they’re after.” At this from Deloit, Journeyman felt them all glance through the Grange’s window, which framed the young men and women on the steps outside, including that one staring from time to time at the bandage on his elbow and the space below it. Did the Cordon finally face more than a propped-up adversary? Be careful what you wish for, Journeyman thought.
“What are you here to propose?” asked Cynthia Pitchings. Now she was in their government too. Or always had been. She was a vestige of the old government, perhaps, that generation toughened in their disappointed-utopian skins.
“We’d like that machine now,” said Deloit. “We could use it, I’m not too proud to say.”
“You mean to turn it over to them?”
“Ma’am, speaking frankly, I mean to ram it down their throats.”
“You think that’s best?”
“Not to rupture your illusions, but there’s those who can’t be appeased with kind words and fish fritters, and that’s what we’re dealing with now. If you want to leave this work to us, and you do, then you’ll have to take our word for it.”
“You want us to send him back?”
That voice was Journeyman’s—high, sudden, and completely startling. He hadn’t meant to speak.
Outside, one of the horses snorted.
38.
What Did Journeyman Want?
WHAT DID JOURNEYMAN WANT? COULD he possibly want the Cordon to drag Todbaum away? Did he want to warn Todbaum?
Was Journeyman in a panic because he feared Todbaum couldn’t defend himself, or because he feared that he would?
Did Journeyman dream of riding with Todbaum into battle in his impregnable, unlikely machine, the last real machine on planet Earth? If so, would it be alongside or against the Cordon from the south?
Did Journeyman simply want, despite his best interest, to see what would become of Founder’s Park were Todbaum permitted to continue contriving whatever it was he was contriving there, his coffee klatch from hell?
Well, at least Journeyman was certain he didn’t want the attention his outcry had gained him. He took the empty teapot to the Grange kitchen, then hung in the doorway beside Quentin, to try and make himself invisible. Feeling in his pocket for Todbaum’s napkin contract, he discovered it had already been soaked in his palm’s nervous sweat.
39.
A Big Meeting, Part 2
DELOIT LEANED BACK, EYES HALF-SHUT, and smoothed his beard as though squeezing liquid from it. Cyrus was the one who answered Journeyman’s question. “Nope. We’ve got no interest in your man. He’s too much a hot potato, an enemy maker. We want the motherfucking thing turned over empty.”
“What are you suggesting we do?” asked Mike Raritan.
Cyrus shrugged. “It’s your problem. We never lay eyes on him again, it’s a good thing.”
“None of us knows how to drive it,” said Mike.
“We all watched him. It wasn’t brain surgery.” Cyrus glanced at Journeyman where he stood, insufficiently hidden in the kitchen doorway. “Word from Eke was, Sandy got took for a little ride.”
“Just once,” Journeyman said.
“So, Sandy’s the deliverer, let him deliver it. We got a good relationship.”
“Eke and his friend,” said Cynthia Pitchings. “They’ve been occupying the woods near Founder’s Park. Is there some purpose in this we should understand?”
“We don’t want violence,” said Paulo.
Deloit showed his upper gums. “Sure, you got us for that.”
“What are they doing?”
“You go ask them that yourselves. Eke and Walt didn’t come on our behalf. They bugged out of their own accord. Maybe they got shy about killing. Just like you all.”
The meeting had taken a turn, grown restive. Or maybe it was suddenly finished. At this moment Delia and Sterling Limetree made themselves known. The teenager vibrated on the brink of some outburst, it seemed to Journeyman. What grievance brought him here? Maybe he’d come as Todbaum’s proxy in some way. Proxy, or dupe. It was his mother who finally spoke.
“I want a promise from one of you,” she said. “I can’t stop him from going, but I want someone to say they’re looking out for him. He’s not as old as he looks.”
This made no sense: Sterling didn’t look old at all. The boy stood forward, dropping his small pack at his feet. “I want to fight,” he said.
Mike Raritan, Paulo, Astur, and Cynthia Pitchings, all on Journeyman’s side of the gathering, only waited to understand. The Cordon elders showed no surprise.
“I’ll watch your boy,” said Carol Leeds evenly.
“See, this is good,” said Deloit, suddenly jubilant. If he’d had a mug of ale in his hand, he’d have clapped it on the table for emphasis. “We need bodies, lean ones. We trade a couple of losers like your new forest friends, and we pick up a kid with some piss in him. Welcome aboard.”
This had the flavor of a ritual occurrence. New to the towns, but a thing the Cordon might have enacted a hundred times. A script Journeyman might have rewritten but not put his name to.
“He’s fifteen,” said Delia Limetree.
“Eke might have been no more than fifteen, five years ago,” said Deloit. “He was pretty good then, too. Better than he ended up. You’re a twin, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sterling.
“Wouldn’t mind a two for one. Seeing how we lost two.”
“His brother isn’t interested,” said Delia.
“Just asking.”
“Maybe it is time for us to finish this meeting,” said Astur, speaking for the first time. “We have heard your request. Now we must consider what to do.”
“Okeydoke,” said Deloit.
“She’s right,” said Carol Leeds. When she opened her mouth, Deloit closed his. Was she the one truly in charge? “These people have a problem they need to work out,” Leeds went on. “We’ll wait for the results. Time to thank them for the food and ride home.”
“And we’ll be glad to care for the two men who have been dismissed from your protection,” Astur continued, as though the ending of the meeting was suddenly hers to direct. “They’ll need to work, of course. Everyone needs to make a contribution.”
“Couldn’t agree more, little lady,” said Deloit. He swept up another fritter from the basket and stood. “Let’s roll.” He put his gloved hand on Sterling’s shoulder and the boy seemed to cradle into Deloit’s presence there. Deloit might practically have strapped Sterling to his voluminous chest and belly.
“He’s too young,” cried Delia Limetree. She stood alone ungrouped, in her own drama of parting. To whom did she petition? Carol Leeds? Maybe some unseen jury to judge them all. No such body existed.
The room lapsed into silence. The murmur of the younger Cordon people who’d stayed on the porch leaked in. Along with it, the breath and shifting of the tethered horses. The room in which they met was just an old box, clapboard and shingle slapped together in the nineteenth century by people long dead. Untended woods grew ever closer on all sides. If they remained silent long enough, they might even hear it growing.
Journeyman felt himself helplessly shredding Todbaum’s world-altering napkin with all the stren
gth in his fingers.
Into this stupefied wrongness came the most unexpected voice. “I’ll go with him,” said Quentin. He slid from behind Journeyman. His voice crabbed and whiny as ever. Yet Journeyman heard in it a kind of resolve. “I’ll watch him for you.” He spoke to Delia Limetree, and to Deloit. “Then you’ll have two, two for your two lost.”
“Right,” said Deloit, as if he’d predicted this as well. “Okay. Welcome to the revolution.”
40.
Aftermath of a Big Meeting
THEY LEFT, THEN, TAKING STERLING Limetree and Quentin with them. Quentin had only needed a moment to gather a small bag—or had he somehow had it prepared in advance? The peninsula group, smaller than before, was left to spill out into the sunshine, to dissolve itself, on an afternoon over which it felt a curtain should fall. None did. Paulo and Mike Raritan and Cynthia Pitchings had journeyed on Spodosol Farm’s horses. They mounted and started back, Paulo making room for Delia Limetree on his horse. The two from Granite Head, Eugene and Paul, had horses too, but stood for a moment with Journeyman and Astur, watching the others depart.
Journeyman’s sense of guilt was both sharp and obscure. Was it meant to be him, instead of Quentin, who’d gone with Sterling Limetree into the Cordon’s ranks? I have a job, he wanted to protest aloud. I am the deliverer and the butcher’s assistant. I am required at the Lake of Tiredness. But no one had accused him of shirking enlistment.
“They’re crazy,” Journeyman heard himself say. “I don’t know how to drive the Blue Streak. No one does.”
“Might be a lucky thing they want to take it off your hands,” said Paul. Journeyman didn’t know him well. He didn’t know anyone from Granite Head well.
“I think it might require voice recognition to even start up,” Journeyman said, trying to batten the rising note of panic in his voice. “What are they going to do, drag it to Belfast behind a team of stallions?”
Eugene grunted a laugh. “Pair of pullers might do the job, now that you mention it.”
“Are they asking us to kill him?” Journeyman said. “Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Listen, Mr. Duplessis.” Paul spoke with a chilling flatness. Journeyman felt the distance between Granite Head and East Tinderwick. Granite Head had the luxury of deciding Todbaum wasn’t their problem.
“Yes?”
Journeyman glanced quickly to find Astur. She’d gone to retrieve her bicycle, and his, from the shoulder where they stood tilted against a pair of birches. Paul kept his voice low. “We’ve been talking. Feeling is, we don’t need some broad consensus this time round. The community’s got no stake in any kind of restorative justice.” The man from Granite Head used the term neutrally, without contempt. Journeyman recognized the comparison it was meant to evoke, even before Paul nailed it down: “He isn’t one of our own, like Kormentz.”
Restorative justice? Kormentz’s so-called trial had been a disaster. After weeks of house arrest in his yurt behind Spodosol’s orchard he’d been present for the ad hoc tribunals, at the start. Then was banished, for his unwillingness to shut up, for attempting to filibuster judgment off into the indefinite future. (Imagine Todbaum given a similar opportunity.) In the end, it had been one of the teenagers Kormentz molested who’d proposed that Kormentz should go to the cabin by the long north pond to be supervised and fed by the towns, rather than sent off to a likely death beyond their boundary. The girl coined the name on the spot: send him to the Lake of Tiredness. It might have been her judgment on them all.
“What’s he accused of, anyway?” Journeyman asked now. Astur approached, guiding both bicycles by the stems. Journeyman doubted he could have managed such an elegant trick.
“It isn’t what he’s accused of, it’s what he’s brought down on us. What he’s capable of. Look at how he’s got the Cordon riled. Left a trail of people riled before he got to the Cordon, it looks like. Him and his machine have got to go, together or apart.”
“I’m open to suggestions as to how,” said Journeyman.
“Nope. This one’s on you. You and your sister.” Paul glanced, again, at Astur. She smiled. No way to know what she’d heard.
Eugene and Paul took themselves away on their horses, leaving Journeyman with Astur. The meeting was over, unless he and Astur constituted a meeting. He’d mounted his bicycle before realizing the North Grange needed shuttering, with Quentin gone. They went inside, cleared the dishes to the kitchen. Journeyman wondered if some other stray person would set up here, at their perimeter, or if the structure would remain empty. He felt heavy with loss. First, loss of the two neighbors who’d made the insane crossing-over into the Cordon. A special loss, too, a dent in the geometry of the towns. From now on, Journeyman considered, he’d have to open the Grange himself for the transfer of goods.
He bicycled with Astur down the road. No horses in sight, nothing but crows and a string of turkeys who funky-chickened grudgingly from their path. The sun was low. They navigated the frost heaves. Journeyman protected his newly repaired wheel.
“What are we going to do?” All he could do not to ask, What does Maddy want to do? But Maddy had recused herself, as she’d declined to attend this meeting. Astur wasn’t his sister’s proxy, even if Paul’s glance had suggested he thought so.
Maddy might restrict herself to midnight visits, to hammer and tongs, or hand-hewn explosives like those once employed by the Unabomber.
“It’s a very interesting question!” said Astur.
“Well, yes.”
“The two young men will really have to be put to some use,” she said. “I’ve been thinking to send them to Quarry Island.”
“Quarry Island?”
“Yes. It’s time to begin work on the lighthouse for real. Though they’ll first have to build themselves some shelter for the winter.”
Had she misunderstood Journeyman’s question? Or chosen to ignore it? At times, Astur made Journeyman feel as if Todbaum were his, Journeyman’s, figment—a thing only Journeyman could see.
They stopped their bicycles at the juncture where Astur would turn off toward East Tinderwick.
“Astur, may I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“Does Maddy have—” Journeyman started again. “Will Maddy go to the park?” She’d already been to the park—Astur must have known this.
“I think it is an excellent question.”
“Todbaum’s kind of . . . fixated.”
“I’m more struck by the way so many fixate on him.”
“I have something—” Attempting to deliver the napkin from his pocket into Astur’s care, Journeyman rained shreds onto the ground. Journeyman’s palm was stained with sweated-off ink, blurred impressions of the nonsense Todbaum had written there. Astur watched him curiously. The napkin blew away, tatters on the road.
“Would you like to join for dinner, Sandy?” she said. “I’m sure we could discuss it further.”
“Oh, thanks, but not tonight.”
“Plans?”
“I’m supposed to visit a . . . friend.” Journeyman felt humiliated. He didn’t know her name yet. The woman in the library hardly expected him—the only scheme in which he was “supposed” to do anything besides wallow in his lonely rooms was that in his inconsolable skull.
41.
His Lonely Rooms
FOUR ROOMS, ABOVE WHAT HAD once been the florist and candy shop. Bed, bath, ill-used kitchen, front room with dormer alcove and a sliver of bay view—though sight of Quarry Island was occluded from here by the spit of land between the Tinderwicks. On the daybed of the alcove, books rustled from the library before the new arrival’s occupation there. Most arranged in a neat row and dusty with good intentions, Graeber’s Debt, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, the Stevedores’ Living the Real Life, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Eliot’s Middlemarch. Open to the cushion on its face, a paperback of Ross Thomas’s The Fools in Town Are on Our Side.
Elsewhere, not much. On the kitchen table, a
squeezed-out tube of Needra’s homemade toothpaste, overdue for return and refilling. Shoved in a kitchen cabinet, a dead laptop full of scripts and treatments, QuickTime files of personal erotica, etc., etc. Closet floor, a pistol in a shoebox, equally useless, equally forgotten. Journeyman never imagined he’d actually use it anyway.
No mirrors.
Journeyman was elsewhere: bolstering his courage to knock on the door of the library.
42.
Drenka
“MAY I COME IN?”
“If there’s a book you want, just tell me and I’ll find it.” She addressed him through the partly open door. Her dark hair was cut short, and in a somewhat irregular shape—she’d been cutting it herself, he supposed. Her gaze was steady and bright and possibly amused. It was true that the woman in the library had found Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book for him, weeks before, demonstrating her aptitude in the stacks. Still, it was the library. This wasn’t her most appealing trait.
“People sometimes like to browse.” Not the footing on which Journeyman had hoped to start.
“Is that what you want? To browse?”
He wondered if they’d ever manage to have a conversation besides this one. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. It isn’t really about a book.”
She only blinked, unwilling to help him.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Wait,” she said, and closed the door. Journeyman was returned to himself, to the scouring bankruptcy of the late afternoon. He felt empty-handed with nothing to deliver. That had been the point: to appear here as other-than-the-deliveryman. Yet what was he?
When she slipped through the door to join him she wore a sweatshirt with the hood drawn up. Perhaps she’d noticed him inspecting her haircut. Or was cold. The sun edged at the horizon; it was reasonable to be cold.
They meandered together toward the water, through the parking area of the abandoned hospital. Though it continued to be a fund of supplies and equipment, the sick and dying preferred to be tended nearly anywhere but in the vast empty facility.
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