21st Century Science Fiction (24 page)

“They’re just a couple of kids.”

“Well, not them exactly, but I mean the country they come from. That’s why I want you to be careful. There’s no telling what they’re doing here. So little Bobby and his radical grandpa can say we’re all prejudiced but who even talks that way anymore?” She walked over to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down in front of me. “I want you to understand, there’s no way to know about evil. So just stay away from them. Promise me.”

Evil. Hard to understand. I nodded.

“Well, all right.” She pushed back the chair, stood up, grabbed her pack of cigarettes from the windowsill. “Make sure not to leave any crumbs. This is the time of year for ants.”

From the kitchen window I could see my mother sitting on the picnic table, a gray plume of smoke spiraling away from her. I rinsed my dishes, loaded the dishwasher, wiped the table and went outside to sit on the front steps and think about the world I never knew. The house on top of the hill blazed in the full sun. The broken windows had been covered by some sort of plastic that swallowed the light.

That night one flew over Oakgrove. I woke up and put my helmet on. My mother was screaming in her room, too frightened to help. My hands didn’t shake the way hers did, and I didn’t lie in my bed screaming. I put the helmet on and listened to it fly past. Not us. Not our town. Not tonight. I fell asleep with the helmet on and in the morning woke up with the marks of it dented on my cheeks.

• • • •

Now, when summer approaches, I count the weeks when the apple trees and lilacs are in blossom, the tulips and daffodils in bloom before they droop with summer’s heat and I think how it is so much like that period of our innocence, that waking into the world with all its incandescence, before being subdued by its shadows into what we became.

“You should have known the world then,” my father says, when I visit him at the nursing home.

We’ve heard it so much it doesn’t mean anything. The cakes, the money, the endless assortment of everything.

“We used to have six different kinds of cereal at one time,” he raises his finger instructively, “coated in sugar, can you imagine? It used to go stale. We threw it out. And the planes. The sky used to be filled with them. Really. People traveled that way, whole families did. It didn’t matter if someone moved away. Hell, you just got on a plane to see them.”

Whenever he speaks like this, whenever any of them do, they sound bewildered, amazed. He shakes his head, he sighs. “We were so happy.”

• • • •

I cannot hear about those times without thinking of spring flowers, children’s laughter, the sound of bells and clatter of goats. Smoke.

Bobby sits in the cart, holding the reins, a pretty dark-skinned girl on either side of him. They ride up and down the street all morning, laughing and crying, their gauzy scarves blowing behind them like rainbows.

The flags droop listlessly from flagpoles and porches. Butterflies flit in and out of gardens. The Whitehall twins play in their backyard and the squeaky sound of their unoiled swings echoes through the neighborhood. Mrs. Renquat has taken the day off to take several kids to the park. I am not invited, probably because I hate Becky Renquat and told her so several times during the school year, pulling her hair which was a stream of white gold so bright I could not resist it. It is Ralph Paterson’s birthday and most of the little kids are spending the day with him and his dad at The Snowman’s Cave Amusement Park where they get to do all the things kids used to do when snow was still safe, like sledding, and building snowmen. Lina Breedsore and Carol Minstreet went to the mall with their baby-sitter who has a boyfriend who works at the movie theater and can sneak them in to watch movies all day long. The town is empty except for the baby Whitehall twins, Trina Needles who is sucking her thumb and reading a book on her porch swing, and Bobby, going up and down the street with the Manmensvitzender girls and their goats. I sit on my porch picking at the scabs on my knees but Bobby speaks only to them, in a voice so low I can’t hear what he says. Finally I stand up and block their way. The goats and cart stutter to a stop, the bells still jingling as Bobby says, “What’s up, Weyers?”

He has eyes so blue, I recently discovered, I cannot look into them for more than thirty seconds, as though they burn me. Instead I look at the girls who are both smiling, even the one who is crying.

“What’s your problem?” I say.

Her dark eyes widen, increasing the pool of milky white around them. She looks at Bobby. The sequins of her scarf catch the sun.

“Jesus Christ, Weyers, what are you talking about?”

“I just wanta know,” I say still looking at her, “what it is with all this crying all the time, I mean like is it a disease, or what?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” The goats’ heads rear, and the bells jingle. Bobby pulls on the reins. The goats step back with clomps and the rattle of wheels but I continue to block their path. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question,” I shout at his shadow against the bright sun. “I just wanta know what her problem is.”

“It’s none of your business,” he shouts and at the same time the smaller girl speaks.

“What?” I say to her.

“It’s the war, and all the suffering.”

Bobby holds the goats steady. The other girl holds onto his arm. She smiles at me but continues to weep.

“Well, so? Did something happen to her?”

“It’s just how she is. She always cries.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Weyers!”

“You can’t cry all the time, that’s no way to live.”

Bobby steers the goats and cart around me. The younger girl turns and stares at me until, at some distance, she waves but I turn away without waving back.

• • • •

Before it was abandoned and then occupied by the Manmensvitzenders the big house on the hill had been owned by the Richters. “Oh sure they were rich,” my father says when I tell him I am researching a book. “But you know, we all were. You should have seen the cakes! And the catalogs. We used to get these catalogs in the mail and you could buy anything that way, they’d mail it to you, even cake. We used to get this catalog, what was it called, Henry and Danny? Something like that. Two guys’ names. Anyhow, when we were young it was just fruit but then, when the whole country was rich you could order spongecake with buttercream, or they had these towers of packages they’d send you, filled with candy and nuts and cookies, and chocolate, and oh my God, right in the mail.”

“You were telling me about the Richters.”

“Terrible thing what happened to them, the whole family.”

“It was the snow, right?”

“Your brother, Jaime, that’s when we lost him.”

“We don’t have to talk about that.”

“Everything changed after that, you know. That’s what got your mother started. Most folks just lost one, some not even, but you know those Richters. That big house on the hill and when it snowed they all went sledding. The world was different then.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Well, neither could we. Nobody could of guessed it. And believe me, we were guessing. Everyone tried to figure what they would do next. But snow? I mean how evil is that anyway?”

“How many?”

“Oh, thousands. Thousands.”

“No, I mean how many Richters?”

“All six of them. First the children and then the parents.”

“Wasn’t it unusual for adults to get infected?”

“Well, not that many of us played in the snow the way they did.”

“So you must have sensed it, or something.”

“What? No. We were just so busy then. Very busy. I wish I could remember. But I can’t. What we were so busy with.” He rubs his eyes and stares out the window. “It wasn’t your fault. I want you to know I understand that.”

“Pop.”

“I mean you kids, that’s just the world we gave you, so full of evil you didn’t even know the difference.”

“We knew, Pop.”

“You still don’t know. What do you think of when you think of snow?”

“I think of death.”

“Well, there you have it. Before that happened it meant joy. Peace and joy.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Well, that’s my point.”

• • • •

“Are you feeling all right?” She dishes out the macaroni, puts the bowl in front of me and stands, leaning against the counter, to watch me eat.

I shrug.

She places a cold palm on my forehead. Steps back and frowns. “You didn’t eat anything from those girls, did you?”

I shake my head. She is just about to speak when I say, “But the other kids did.”

“Who? When?” She leans so close that I can see the lines of makeup sharp against her skin.

“Bobby. Some of the other kids. They ate candy.”

Her hand comes palm down, hard, against the table. The macaroni bowl jumps, and the silverware. Some milk spills. “Didn’t I tell you?” she shouts.

“Bobby plays with them all the time now.”

She squints at me, shakes her head, then snaps her jaw with grim resolve. “When? When did they eat this candy?”

“I don’t know. Days ago. Nothing happened. They said it was good.”

Her mouth opens and closes like a fish. She turns on her heels and grabs the phone as she leaves the kitchen. The door slams. I can see her through the window, pacing the backyard, her arms gesturing wildly.

• • • •

My mother organized the town meeting and everybody came, dressed up like it was church. The only people who weren’t there were the Manmensvitzenders, for obvious reasons. Most people brought their kids, even the babies who sucked thumbs or blanket corners. I was there and so was Bobby with his grandpa who chewed the stem of a cold pipe and kept leaning over and whispering to his grandson during the proceedings which quickly became heated, though there wasn’t much argument, the heat being fueled by just the general excitement of it, my mother especially in her roses dress, her lips painted a bright red so that even I came to some understanding that she had a certain beauty though I was too young to understand what about that beauty wasn’t entirely pleasing. “We have to remember that we are all soldiers in this war,” she said to much applause.

Mr. Smyths suggested a sort of house arrest but my mother pointed out that would entail someone from town bringing groceries to them. “Everybody knows these people are starving. Who’s going to pay for all this bread anyway?” she said. “Why should we have to pay for it?”

Mrs. Mathers said something about justice.

Mr. Hallensway said, “No one is innocent anymore.”

My mother, who stood at the front of the room, leaning slightly against the village board table, said, “Then it’s decided.”

Mrs. Foley, who had just moved to town from the recently destroyed Chesterville, stood up, in that way she had sort of crouching into her shoulders, with those eyes that looked around nervously so that some of us had secretly taken to calling her Bird Woman, and with a shaky voice, so soft everyone had to lean forward to hear, said, “Are any of the children actually sick?”

The adults looked at each other and each other’s children. I could tell that my mother was disappointed that no one reported any symptoms. The discussion turned to the bright colored candies when Bobby, without standing or raising his hand, said in a loud voice, “Is that what this is about? Do you mean these?” He half laid back in his chair to wiggle his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of them.

There was a general murmur. My mother grabbed the edge of the table. Bobby’s grandfather, grinning around his dry pipe, plucked one of the candies from Bobby’s palm, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.

Mr. Galvin Wright had to use his gavel to hush the noise. My mother stood up straight and said, “Fine thing, risking your own life like that, just to make a point.”

“Well, you’re right about making a point, Maylene,” he said, looking right at my mother and shaking his head as if they were having a private discussion, “but this is candy I keep around the house to get me out of the habit of smoking. I order it through the Government Issue catalog. It’s perfectly safe.”

“I never said it was from them,” said Bobby, who looked first at my mother and then searched the room until he found my face, but I pretended not to notice.

When we left, my mother took me by the hand, her red fingernails digging into my wrist. “Don’t talk,” she said, “just don’t say another word.” She sent me to my room and I fell asleep with my clothes on still formulating my apology.

• • • •

The next morning when I hear the bells, I grab a loaf of bread and wait on the porch until they come back up the hill. Then I stand in their path.

“Now what d’you want?” Bobby says.

I offer the loaf, like a tiny baby being held up to God in church. The weeping girl cries louder, her sister clutches Bobby’s arm. “What d’you think you’re doing?” he shouts.

“It’s a present.”

“What kind of stupid present is that? Put it away! Jesus Christ, would you put it down?”

My arms drop to my sides, the loaf dangles in its bag from my hand. Both girls are crying. “I just was trying to be nice,” I say, my voice wavering like the Bird Woman’s.

“God, don’t you know anything?” Bobby says. “They’re afraid of our food, don’t you even know that?”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause of the bombs, you idiot. Why don’t you think once in a while?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The goats rattle their bells and the cart shifts back and forth. “The bombs! Don’t you even read your history books? In the beginning of the war we sent them food packages all wrapped up the same color as these bombs that would go off when someone touched them.”

“We did that?”

“Well, our parents did.” He shakes his head and pulls the reins. The cart rattles past, both girls pressed against him as if I am dangerous.

• • • •

“Oh, we were so happy!” my father says, rocking into the memory. “We were like children, you know, so innocent, we didn’t even know.”