After the Collapse (14 page)

She must have felt the same. As we strolled away down Avenue B, she held my hand.

“I don’t have a roomie in my tent.”

“Oh?”

“It’s just me and my daughter. Luck of the draw, I guess.”

“I like kids. Never had any, but I like ‘em.”

“Her name’s Izzy. Short for Isabel. You’ll get to meet her. But maybe not just yet.”

“How come?”

“She’s made a lot of new friends. They stay out all day, playing on the edge of the camp. Some kind of weird new game they invented.”

“We could go check up on her, and I could say hello.”

Nia squeezed my hand. “Maybe not right this minute.”

* * * *

I got to meet Izzy the day after Nia and I slept together. I suppose I could’ve hung around till Izzy came home for supper, but the intimacy with Nia, after such a desert of personal isolation, left me feeling a little disoriented and pressured. So I made a polite excuse for my departure, which Nia accepted with good grace, and arranged to meet mother and daughter for breakfast.

Izzy bounced into the refectory ahead of her mother. She was seven or eight, long-limbed and fair-haired in contrast to her mother’s compact, raven-haired paleness, but sharing Nia’s high-cheeked bone structure. I conjectured backward to a gangly blond father.

The little girl zeroed in on me somehow out of the whole busy dining hall, racing up to where I sat, only to slam on the brakes with alarming precipitousness.

“You’re Mr. Hedges!” she informed me and the world.

“Yes, I am. And you’re Izzy.”

I was ready to shake her hand in a formal adult manner. But then she exclaimed, “You made my Mom all smiley!” and launched herself into my awkward embrace.

Before I could really respond, she was gone, heading for the self-service cereal line.

I looked at Nia, who was grinning.

“And this,” I asked, “is her baseline?”

“Precisely. When she’s really excited—”

“I’ll wear one of those padded suits we used for training the K-9 squad.”

Nia’s expression altered to one of seriousness and sympathy, and I instantly knew what was coming. I cringed inside, if not where it showed. She sat down next to me and put a hand on my arm.

“Parrish, I admit I did a little Googling on you after we split yesterday, over at the online tent. I know about why you aren’t a cop anymore. And I just want to say that—”

Before she could finish, Izzy materialized out of nowhere, bearing a tray holding two bowls of Technicolor puffs swimming in chocolate milk, and slipped herself between us slick as a greased eel.

“They’re almost out of food! You better hurry!” With a plastic knife, Izzy began slicing a peeled banana into chunks thick as Oreos that plopped with alarming splashes into her bowls.

I stood up gratefully. “I’ll get us something, Nia. Eggs and bacon and toast okay?”

She gave me a look which said that she could wait to talk. “Sure.”

During breakfast, Nia and I mostly listened to Izzy’s chatter.

“—and then Vonique’s all like, ‘But the way I remember it is the towers were next to the harbor, not near the zoo.’ And Eddie goes, ‘Na-huh, they were right where the park started.’ And they couldn’t agree and they were gonna start a fight, until I figured out that they were talking about two different places! Vonique meant the Goblin Towers, and Eddie meant the Towers of Bone! So I straightened them out, and now the map of Djamala is like almost half done!”

“That’s wonderful, honey.”

“It’s a real skill, being a peacemaker like that.”

Izzy cocked her head and regarded me quizzically. “But that’s just what I’ve always been forever.”

In the next instant she was up and kissing her mother, then out the hall and raising puffs of dust as she ran toward where I could see other kids seemingly waiting for her.

Nia and I spent the morning wandering around the camp, talking about anything and everything—except my ancient, recent disgrace. We watched a pickup soccer game for an hour or so, the players expending the bottled energy that would have gone to work and home before the disaster, then ended up back at her tent around three.

Today was as warm as yesterday, and we raised a pretty good sweat. Nia dropped off to sleep right after, but I couldn’t.

Eleven days after the flood, and it was all I could dream about.

* * * *

Ethan was really starting to get on my nerves. He had seen me hanging out with Nia and Izzy, and used the new knowledge to taunt me.

“What’s up with you and the little girl, Hedges? Thinking of keeping your hand in with some target practice?”

I stood quivering over his bunk before I even realized I had moved. My fists were bunched at my hips, ready to strike. But both Ethan and I knew I wouldn’t.

The penalty for fighting at any of the Femavilles was instant expulsion, and an end to government charity. I couldn’t risk losing Nia now that I had found her. Even if we managed to stay in touch while apart, who was to say that the fluid milieu of the post-disaster environment would not conspire to supplant our relationship with another.

So I stalked out and went to see Hannah Lawes.

One complex of tents hosted the bureaucrats. Lawes sat at a folding table with her omnipresent laptop. Hooked to a printer, the machine was churning out travel vouchers branded with official glyphs of authenticity.

“Mr. Hedges. What can I do for you? Have you decided to take up one of the host offerings? There’s a farming community in Nebraska—”

I shook my head in the negative. Trying to imagine myself relocated to the prairies was so disorienting that I almost forgot why I had come here.

Hannah Lawes seemed disappointed by my refusal of her proposal, but realistic about the odds that I would’ve accepted. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Not many people are leaping at what I can offer. I’ve only gotten three takers so far. And I can’t figure out why. They’re all generous, sensible berths.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one wants ‘sensible’ after what they’ve been through. We all want to be reborn as phoenixes—not dray horses. That’s all that would justify our sufferings.”

Hannah Lawes said nothing for a moment, and only the minor whine of the printer filigreed the bubble of silence around us. When she spoke, her voice was utterly neutral.

“You could die here before you achieve that dream, Mr. Hedges. Now, how can I help you, if not with a permanent relocation?”

“If I arrange different living quarters with the consent of everyone involved, is there any regulation stopping me from switching tents?”

“No, not at all.”

“Good. I’ll be back.”

I tracked down Nia and found her using a piece of exercise equipment donated by a local gym. She hopped off and hugged me.

“Have to do something about my weight. I’m not used to all this lolling around.”

Nia had been a waitress back in the city, physically active eight or more hours daily. My own routines, at least since Calley left me, had involved more couch-potato time than mountain climbing, and the sloth of camp life sat easier on me.

We hugged, her body sweaty in my arms, and I explained my problem.

“I realize we haven’t known each other very long, Nia, but do you think—”

“I’d like it if you moved in with Izzy and me, Parrish. One thing the tsunami taught us—life’s too short to dither. And I’d feel safer.”

“No one’s been bothering you, have they?”

“No, but there’s just too many weird noises out here in the country. Every time a branch creaks, I think someone’s climbing my steps.”

I hugged her again, harder, in wordless thanks.

We both went back to Lawes and arranged the new tent assignments.

When I went to collect my few possessions, Ethan sneered at me.

“Knew you’d run, Hedges. Without your badge, you’re nothing.”

As I left, I wondered what I had been even with my badge.

* * * *

Living with Nia and Izzy, I naturally became more involved in the young girl’s activities.

And that’s when I learned about Djamala.

By the end of the second week in Femaville 29, the atmosphere had begun to sour. The false exuberance engendered by sheer survival amidst so much death—and the accompanying sense of newly opened horizons—had dissipated. In place of these emotions came anomie, irritability, anger, despair, and a host of other negative feelings. The immutable, unchanging confines of the unfenced camp assumed the proportions of a stalag. The food, objectively unchanged in quality or quantity, met with disgust, simply because we had no control over its creation. The shared privies assumed a stink no amount of bleach could dispel.

Mere conversation and gossip had paled, replaced with disproportionate arguments over inconsequentials. Sports gave way to various games of chance, played with the odd pair of dice or deck of cards, with bets denominated in sex or clothing or desserts.

One or two serious fights resulted in the promised expulsions, and, chastened but surly, combatants restrained themselves to shoving matches and catcalls.

A few refugees, eager for stimulation and a sense of normality, made the long trek into town—and found themselves returned courtesy of local police cars.

The bureaucrats managing the camp—Hannah Lawes and her peers—were not immune to the shifting psychic tenor of Femaville 29. From models of optimism and can-do effectiveness, the officials began to slide into terse minimalist responses.

“I don’t know what more we can do,” Hannah Lawes told me. “If our best efforts to reintegrate everyone as functioning and productive members of society are not appreciated, then—”

She left the consequences unstated, merely shaking her head ruefully at our ingratitude and sloth.

The one exception to this general malaise were the children.

Out of a thousand people in Femaville 29, approximately two hundred were children younger than twelve. Although sometimes their numbers seemed larger, as they raced through the camp’s streets and avenues in boisterous packs. Seemingly unaffected by the unease and dissatisfaction exhibited by their guardians and parents, the kids continued to enjoy their pastoral interlude. School, curfews, piano lessons—all shed in a return to a prelapsarian existence as hunter-gatherers of the twenty-first century.

When they weren’t involved in traditional games, they massed on the outskirts of the camp for an utterly novel undertaking.

There, I discovered, they were building a new city to replace the one they had lost.

Or, perhaps, simply mapping one that already existed.

And Izzy Horsley, I soon learned (with actually very little surprise), was one of the prime movers of this jovial, juvenile enterprise.

With no tools other than their feet and hands, the children had cleared a space almost as big as a football field of all vegetation, leaving behind a dusty canvas on which to construct their representation of an imaginary city.

Three weeks into its construction, the map-cum-model had assumed impressive dimensions, despite the rudimentary nature of its materials.

I came for the first time to the site one afternoon when I grew tired of continuously keeping Nia company in the exercise tent. Her own angst about ensuring the best future for herself and loved ones had manifested as an obsession with “keeping fit” that I couldn’t force myself to share. With my mind drifting, a sudden curiosity about where Izzy was spending so much of her time stole over me, and I ambled over to investigate.

Past the ultimate tents, I came upon what could have been a construction site reimagined for the underage cast of
Sesame Street
.

The youngest children were busy assembling stockpiles of stones and twigs and leaves. The stones were quarried from the immediate vicinity, emerging still wet with loam, while sticks and leaves came from a nearby copse in long disorderly caravans.

Older children were engaged in two different kinds of tasks. One chore involved using long pointed sticks to gouge lines in the dirt: lines that plainly marked streets, natural features and the outlines of buildings. The second set of workers was elaborating these outlines with the organic materials from the stockpiles. The map was mostly flat, but occasionally a structure, teepee or cairn, rose up a few inches.

The last, smallest subset of workers were the architects: the designers, engineers, imagineers of the city. They stood off to one side, consulting, arguing, issuing orders, and sometimes venturing right into the map to correct the placement of lines or ornamentation.

Izzy was one of these elite.

Deep in discussion with a corn-rowed black girl and a pudgy white boy wearing smudged glasses, Izzy failed to note my approach, and so I was able to overhear their talk. Izzy was holding forth at the moment.

“—Sprankle Hall covers two whole blocks, not just one! C’mon, you gotta remember that! Remember when we went there for a concert, and after we wanted to go around back to the door where the musicians were coming out, and how long it took us to get there?”

The black girl frowned, then said, “Yeah, right, we had to walk like forever. But if Sprankle Hall goes from Cleverly Street all the way to Khush Lane, then how does Pinemarten Avenue run without a break?”

The fat boy spoke with assurance. “It’s the Redondo Tunnel. Goes under Sprankle Hall.”

Izzy and the black girl grinned broadly. “Of course! I remember when that was built!”

I must have made some noise then, for the children finally noticed me. Izzy rushed over and gave me a quick embrace.

“Hey, Parrish! What’re you doing here?”

“I came to see what was keeping you guys so busy. What’s going on here?”

Izzy’s voice expressed no adult embarrassment, doubt, irony or blasé dismissal of a temporary time-killing project. “We’re building a city! Djamala! It’s someplace wonderful!”

The black girl nodded solemnly. I recalled the name Vonique from Izzy’s earlier conversation, and the name seemed suddenly inextricably linked to this child.

“Well,” said Vonique, “it
will
be wonderful, once we finish it. But right now it’s still a
mess
.”