by Dave Eggers
“I do.”
“May I see what you have?”
Four reached into his shoe and removed the folded bills. They were wet with perspiration, but Medallion took no notice. He removed two bills from the bunch and put them in his own pocket. Medallion stared at the remaining bills. “This will have to do,” he said. “May I take this?”
Four allowed Medallion to return to the commander with the money. Almost immediately he heard the commander’s barking negotiations. The commander was outraged by the paltry sum, which would have to be split between the wet-eyed father and the commander, but Medallion eventually calmed him. And then came to retrieve Four and Nine.
“We are done.”
XX
THE OXCART MEDALLION had hired smelled of manure and human urine. It was taking Four and Nine back to the RS-80 as Medallion rode alongside on his motorcycle.
Nine’s eyes were closed tight. The road was the one Four had paved, but the wheels of the oxcart were roughly hewn and the cart shook and shimmied.
“I’m sorry,” Four said to him.
“That went far better than I expected,” Medallion said, and laughed. Four smiled. Nine had been arrested while gravely ill, Four’s money was gone, and they’d used the last of their funds to hire an oxcart. But they were alive and free.
“The fact that the commander negotiated with me at all was remarkable. He is of the other faction,” Medallion said. He seemed to be contemplating the strangeness of this. “But he no doubt suspected you had money, and would spend it quickly to get your companion out of prison.” Again he paused, as if unraveling what had happened. “The commander wanted a transaction. My guess is that he will split the fee you paid with the father and he will forget about the incident. The father, though—I don’t know. I fear for the safety of his daughter. Because she is spoiled, she could be killed or might kill herself now. Many women do this.”
When they returned to the vehicle, a dawn of pale green was breaking. They found Cousin and two other men gathered around the machine. The men helped move Nine from the oxcart, and the oxcart driver went on his way, traveling south on the bright black road.
“You have been up all night. We can leave you to rest,” Medallion said to Four.
But Four felt strangely awake. He knew that the schedule was now indeed in jeopardy, and he sensed that there might be other distractions before they reached the capital.
“I’m starting again now,” he said.
He couldn’t waste the day, or even half the day. He took food from his pack and loaded it into the vehicle. Medallion directed the men to lift Nine and arrange him again on the hood of the paver. They assembled his makeshift bedding and strapped him fast to the frame.
“I would assist you today,” Medallion said, “but I must return to my wife. Cousin will be clearing the road for you today. I will see you in the capital. I will bring my wife in the tuk-tuk. When you are high in the Imperial Hotel, look for us. The tuk-tuk has a bright yellow roof. That will be us.”
* * *
—
Four started the RS-80 and the engine sent a vibration through the frame. Four saw, emerging from the sarcophagus on the hood, Nine’s outstretched hand. Nine turned his wrist slowly, an homage to royalty. He was ready.
Four started down the road.
After an hour he saw a bright silver roof of corrugated steel. It was far larger than any structure he’d seen since he’d arrived. A roof like this was rare in this country; he assumed the building was both new and built by people with means. Indeed, as he drew closer, he saw that it was an NGO, one he had not heard of. As the RS-80 passed slowly, he saw staff moving in and out of the building. One man, in a khaki suit, left the building and got into a gleaming white Range Rover and, without acknowledging Four, drove up the embankment and onto the just-paved highway, speeding south on it as if it had been finished for years, not minutes.
The settlements became denser and more modernized. Planes and helicopters were more frequent, and traffic on the road more chaotic. Vehicles approached from every side and used the road behind him and in front without regard for the work at hand. Fewer trees dotted the landscape, and fires from homes and businesses sent twisting plumes of white smoke into the azure sky. Passersby waved to Four and he occasionally waved back. He was exhausted and was ready to be finished. His screen said he was two pods from the end. When he reached the next one, he had three minutes while the RS-80 put the new pod into place, so he closed his eyes. Instantly sleep took him under.
He woke to the signal that the new pod was in place. He opened his eyes to find a trio of women in colorful dresses at his window. They had a basket with them, and were pointing to it, and to Nine. Four could not imagine how they knew Nine was there amid the bundle.
He opened his window. One of the women roared a string of unintelligible words. She had a high forehead and wore a bright turquoise wrap that reached her ankles. Again she gestured to Nine, and to the basket, in which she seemed to have a mortar and pestle. She yelled more, spittle gathering around her tense mouth.
The RS-80 was ready to move. Four smiled and waved the women off, and allowed the machine to move forward. But the women did not disperse. They simply moved to the side, like water parting, and walked alongside the vehicle.
Four waved them off again, but they were no longer paying him attention. Instead they talked among themselves, seeming to be debating a course of action. Finally the youngest and smallest of the women, in an orange dress with a shorter cut, took a plastic spoon from the basket and filled it with a dark paste from the pestle.
Again Four waved her off, but the woman in orange paid him no mind. She stepped quickly onto the chassis of the RS-80 and leaned over to Nine’s head. She reached in, folding the bedding back to reveal his face. Now Four could see his eyes open as she placed her hand on his forehead with calm authority. With the other hand, she brought the spoon to his mouth and split his lips with her fingers. The paste went in and she closed his mouth, helping him to swallow it.
All of this happened too quickly for Four to do anything about it. Something about their deliberate speed, the surety of their mission, had paralyzed him, had lulled him into believing they were acquaintances of Medallion who were offering food, gifts. Now this nimble young woman had fed Nine something and was already back on the side of the road, reporting her success to the other two women. The three of them ceased keeping pace with the vehicle, breaking off and blending back into the shops along the road. Four looked behind him, and found the one in turquoise waving to him in a way that was final.
He turned back to Nine, whose face was no longer visible. The woman in orange had moved Nine’s bedding. Four’s first instinct was to stop the vehicle, to investigate Nine, to take whatever was left in his mouth and scrape it out—to shut down the machine and send Nine back to the clinic they had recently passed.
But there was something in the women’s way, their businesslike manner, that led him to think proceeding was the best and indeed only option. They had given him some kind of local food, some kind of medicine, so what, he thought. He knew so little about the people of this region, but certainly there were not among them a trio of female assassins administering poisons in the light of day.
XXI
WHEN FOUR POWERED down the paver that afternoon, he found Nine awake and smiling. There was color in his face, and when he saw Four, his eyes welled. “My savior,” he said.
With some difficulty Four lowered Nine from the hood of the paver and dragged him to the side of the road. He brushed aside some gravel and arranged Nine so his head looked down the gentle grade. Once settled, Nine took Four’s arm with remarkable strength.
“My superior,” Nine said, and smiled.
Four went to the vehicle to retrieve his pack. He returned and threw a nutrition bar to Nine. Its plastic wrapper made a scraping sound against
the plastic tarp still enclosing Nine.
“Will we make the schedule?” Nine asked.
“We’ll be done tomorrow.”
“Where’s the man? The helper?”
“He’s coming. When the road’s done he’s bringing his wife for treatment. At the hospital in the city.”
“So we did something good,” Nine said. “You did, that is. We actually did something here. I’ve been picturing the parade and it makes me proud. You happy?”
“I don’t know,” Four said. He had been thinking about Medallion and his wife, and when he thought about people like that, quickly reaching the capital and its promises, he felt some satisfaction.
“I’m sorry, though,” Nine said. “I know I didn’t do much to mitigate obstacles.”
Nine smiled as if the two of them had established a wonderful inside joke. Four could not pretend he had forgiveness for Nine.
“You should not do this kind of work again,” he said.
“I know,” Nine said. “I see that now. I do. I watched you. You just do the work. You don’t look left or right. ”
Four softened toward Nine. “You gave away the first-aid kit, didn’t you?”
Nine nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“And the satellite phone?”
Nine looked into his open palms. “I thought they needed them more than we did.”
Four was unaffected. Nothing surprised him and none of this mattered now. It was over and he was going home. He pictured himself on the ferry, passing his archipelago’s whaleback stones, seeing his family waiting for him on the landing. “I’m going to rest awhile before dinner,” Four said, and moved to retrieve his earphones.
Nine raised himself to his side. “Can I ask what you listen to when you put those in? Even when I’m close, I don’t hear any music.”
Normally Four would not allow a stranger, and he considered Nine a stranger, to hear his recording. But soon he would leave this country and leave Nine, and would never see him again. He gave Nine his earphones and looked away.
“Sounds like a kitchen,” Nine said, listening intently. “Plates and silverware being set.” Four had not expected Nine to narrate what he heard, but he found it oddly pleasant.
“A child’s voice. That must be your daughter. You have a daughter. You told me you weren’t married. But of course you’re married. Of course you have a child. That explains so much. Her voice! It’s funny how high it is. It sounds like a cartoon. What’s she saying over and over?”
Four knew the word was breakfast. It was his daughter’s favored time of day. She was so quick to rise. When she opened her eyes in the morning she was wholly awake, on her feet, moving, as if she’d been only pretending to sleep through all the dark hours.
“Now a quick wet clicking,” Nine continued. “I’m thinking eggs being whisked in a bowl?” Yes, Four thought, exactly. “Now someone’s humming. A woman. That must be your wife. She has a pretty voice. Is that a song? It sounds familiar.”
Four pictured his wife uncapping his daughter’s cup, the spillproof one she could hold with her tiny hand.
Nine’s eyes opened wide. “Wow. A loud banging. What is that? Sounds like a woodpecker.”
As soon as his daughter’s cup was filled with her carrot juice, she banged it like an exultant king. His wife would calmly ask her to stop, and she would, taking a long pull of juice and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She was a brazen and unflinching child, having never been made aware of the vulnerabilities of her flesh.
“Now the eggs are simmering,” Nine said. “Now a sound like chopping. Someone’s chopping something.”
Apples, melon, celery. Four would cut them and his wife would arrange the pieces in a radial for their daughter, who would put her cup in the middle of them and stare, as if momentarily stunned by their beautiful symmetry. Then, with a heavy sigh, she would take the first spoke from the wheel and eat it.
“Hm. Just sounds of silverware. Tinking. How long does this tape go on?”
XXII
AS THEY APPROACHED the capital, Nine was now squeezed into the cab. The forest gave way to shantytowns that stitched themselves into waves of blue-tented internally displaced camps and then stone dwellings hundreds of years old. And soon all the settlements knelt before the city, itself an irrational mix of ancient and modern, glass and iron and wood.
“Look,” Nine said.
Behind them, stretching as far as they could see, people from the south were on the new highway, making their way toward the gleaming city. There were the ill and infirm, carried on oxcarts and pulled by bicycles. There were pickup trucks bearing produce. There was a line of women pulling wagons full of woven goods. All were moving at the pace of the paver, as if respectfully following a funeral procession.
“See this?” Nine said. “They’re waiting for us to finish. Don’t you see? It’s like a parade before the real parade. This is one of hope. A procession of longing. The second we’re done, their world catapults into the twenty-first century. Trade, medical care, access to government services, information, education, relatives, electricity and the northern port.”
Somewhere back there were Medallion and his wife, Four assumed. They had not made arrangements to say goodbye, but Four owed him much, and Nine owed him more.
The last few kilometers were chaotic. As they entered the city, some of the people from the south peeled off into the city’s streets and alleys. There was trading to be done, people to meet. In a few instances there seemed to be tensions. Some watchers on the roadside stood and spat words at the people from the south. But that seemed to be a minority of the audience gathered. The rest of them were actively cheering the finishing of the road. Children played on it, twirling, running, watching their elastic shadows.
At the road’s end there were flags and banners, a thousand soldiers in uniform, all gathered at a wide staging ground at the edge of the city. Beyond, the glass high-rises of the city’s waterfront shone gold in the afternoon sun. This city was a hundred years ahead of the town from which they’d begun the road. Four knew that gap would quickly collapse now. He’d seen it happen before.
His work ended suddenly. The road ceased short of the city center; they would add on-ramps later. When he’d reached the end, Four powered down the RS-80, ceding it to the same two mechanics who had delivered it two weeks before. An array of personages and local police swept Four and Nine from the vehicle to a reception area, where they met various dignitaries and commanders, all of them in a jovial but businesslike mood. There was talk that the president might appear to shake their hands, but finally they were told he was too busy with last-minute plans. Four and Nine were feted and fed and late that night were escorted to the hotel called the Imperial, where they were given adjoining suites with views of the city and of the road they’d finished.
Four should have felt tired, and should have slept for days, but that night his mind could not rest. He turned on the television and watched what must have been archival footage of the government army conducting exercises. He retrieved his earphones, settled them into his ears and arranged himself in bed, then pressed play. He was asleep before his daughter began banging her cup.
XXIII
“YOU’RE NOT STAYING for the parade?” Nine asked.
“I can’t. I’d planned to be home by now,” Four said. “My family’s waiting.”
“But we were on time,” Nine said.
“Yes, but I expected to be early,” Four said. “You’ll stay?” Four asked.
“I’ll stay,” Nine said. “Maybe for a week, just to soak it in. Get a free meal here and there.”
They looked down at the road below. It was pristine, so black and lightless it looked like a chasm.
“Quiet, though, isn’t it?” Nine noted. “Yesterday there were ten thousand people on it.”
“They’re
just getting ready for the parade, I imagine,” Four said. “And I’m sure they need the road clear so they can begin without obstruction.”
When Four got to the airport, it, too, was oddly quiet. The company had found Four a place on a luxurious jet, and Four had no interactions with customs officials of any kind. He was driven to the tarmac by a uniformed official and walked up the stairs carrying only the pack he’d had with him the last two weeks. He had acquired nothing and lost nothing.
On board, he found himself among a group of formally dressed men and women, some of them local, more of them visitors like himself. He walked down the aisle, ignored by all of the passengers but one, a man who was smiling at him as he passed. It took Four a moment to place him. It was the rebel general who had approached him on the highway. He was in civilian dress now, but was wearing the mirrored sunglasses, round and bright like two full moons, that Four had seen hanging from his uniform when they’d met. Four nodded to him and took his seat.
As the plane taxied and took off, the passengers pressed their faces to the windows, preoccupied with what was happening below. For a group of experienced travelers, they were acting like children on their first flight.
The parade, Four realized. As the plane circled low around the city, they jostled to see the parade. He laughed at himself, at his ability to temporarily forget something he’d made possible. For a moment the plane followed the path of the road, and Four saw it clearly, the straight line he’d made between north and south. Thousands of southerners were making their way toward the capital on foot and in small vehicles. They would be joining the parade, or meeting it, he assumed. With a start he remembered that Medallion had said he would be among those following the new highway to the capital. He searched for Medallion’s tuk-tuk with the yellow roof, and finally, amid a throng of walkers and a few dull-colored cars, he was sure he found it. His eyes welled and he smiled, to think how simple it could all be, cause and effect in a place like this. Then a gasp came from a passenger in front of him.
