Amerika (3 page)

“My wife’s sister told me her husband ran off and joined. He was one of them survivalist types. She said there was hundreds of ’em, living in caves in the Rockies.”

“Can’t believe every rumor comes along—”

“Yeah, but what if it’s true?”

Peter shrugged. “Not a lot to do with us, I guess.” The farmer shook his head, reluctantly agreeing. Peter moved toward his booth. Before he had time to take off his coat and sit down, Betty, the timeless owner of the cafe, walked over with a cup of coffee. Betty was a local institution—ageless, shapeless, but seldom speechless. She wore a net over her graying mop of reddish-brown hair, and a sleeveless brown sweater over her white uniform.

“What’ll it be, Peter?”

“Aunt Jemima pancakes with Log Cabin maple syrup, maybe some little pork link sausages, two eggs over easy, and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.” “Yeah, me too.” She smiled at Peter, licking her lips as though she could taste the remembered favorites of the past. “Would you settle for soy cakes with some fresh molasses?”

“Don’t I always?” Peter smiled.

“If you want better, you’ll have to go out to the SSU barracks. I saw a load of stuff go out there yesterday— eggs, pork chops, steaks. Maybe they got your Aunt Jemima. Just tell ’em you’re the county administrator and they’re in the county.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“’Course, you’d have to eat with ’em.”

Being reminded that he did, in fact, have options, made him uncomfortable and dimly ashamed. Before she could go on, he hastened to make it clear that what everyone else ate was plenty good for him by cutting in with “I’ll take the soy cakes, thanks.”

At that moment, Ward Milford walked in. He was wearing his deputy sheriff uniform, clean Levi’s, a faded flannel shirt, and a fur-lined parka that had seen him through many a cold winter. His wind-stung face
set off the whiteness of his unruly shock of hair. Betty automatically poured him a cup of coffee, grunted a good morning, and shuffled away.

“She’s not real chipper this morning,” Ward said. “She’s having supply problems.”

Ward tasted the coffee and grimaced. “It’s tough, living in the middle of the most productive farmland on the planet, and all you can get is soyburgers.”

“So what kind of night did we have?”

“Not so hot. A drunk, just passing through, been drinking lighter fluid. Died. Emergency wouldn’t pump his stomach.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Some new regulation. Triage, they call it. You know what that means?”

“Yeah, doctors decide who to treat and who not to treat. In essence, it means doctors play God.”

Ward shrugged. “Anyway, the poor bastard died.” “I’ll talk to Alan Drummond about it. I don’t like seeing people die like that, even some wino drifter.” “Besides the wino,” Ward continued, “we had some runners passing through, probably on some sort of errands for the Resisters further west. We looked the other way. And some kids stole an SSU jeep and took it for a joyride.”

“Any idea who?”

Ward’s face broke into a sheepish grin. “Probably my son or one of his friends.”

“Pass the word, we don’t need that kind of problem. Why rattle the cage? And listen, no matter what Dr. Drummond says about his new regulations, I want an honest record of what happens if someone dies, be it a wino, a drifter, whatever.”

“You t
hin
k it matters?”

“It does to me. Dammit,” said Peter Bradford, as if
struggling desperately to hold on to his own sense of decency. “It’s got to matter.”

Ward stared at him, his face suddenly intense. “What matters to me is that my great-grandfather helped build this goddamned country—cut down the trees with his own hands—built his spread into ten thousand acres. The damn county is named after us, and whatta we got now? Fifty damned acres and I’m a deputy sheriff under a system that decided there shouldn’t be
a
sheriff. I worked my whole life, and this is where it goes. Sometimes I feel like we’re the only ones who think it does matter. Country’s dead anyway.”

“Speaking of death,” said Betty, who had sidled toward them balancing a couple of plates, “here’s your soy cakes.”

She clattered the plates down rudely on the table, and the two men, more from habit than appetite, dug in.

After one bite, Peter Bradford laid his fork aside. “This is really awful,” he said, his eyes fixed on the colorless lumps on his plate.

Ward’s face relaxed into a small but mirthless smile. “That’s what really makes you want to give up. You can’t even get a good breakfast.”

Chapter 2

A
few miles
outside Milford, a long, poplar-lined driveway branched off the main road and led to a once-proud Victorian farmhouse. Now, though, the house was in sorry need of repair. Its dilapidated state suggested more than the usual shortages of paint, tools, and building supplies. Those shortages were almost universal during the so-called Transition—that vague and pretty-sounding term for the limbo America had fallen into. But the sad state of the old Victorian farmhouse bespoke another sort of lack—an absence of spirit, a vacuum of hope.

Alethea Milford, standing in front of her bathroom mirror and gazing at her own red-rimmed eyes, saw that same vacuum of hope reflected in her weary face. Alethea was a big woman—nearly six feet tall—and in her soul she knew that frame had been intended to house an outsized destiny. Once, perhaps, her spirit had been generous and expansive; now it was shriveled and pinched.

She took things far too personally, and she knew it. Her brothers Ward and Devin—-they could externalize their rage, could make accommodations. She could do nothing but seethe inside—-and drink. And in the throes of that drinking, cast herself into more dubious forms of self-abandonment than she cared to think about at seven o’clock in the morning.

It would have all been different, she ruefully considered, if only the whole world hadn’t gone crazy around her. She’d been one of those young women whose life was all in place, who had a plan. At the time of the Soviet attack, Alethea Milford had been an honor student at the University of Nebraska. She was studying journalism, and by God she could write the stuff. She saw her future clearly: the trench coat, the note pads, the bylines, the sense of doing something.

And what was she doing now? Ruining herself with alcohol, wallowing in the knowledge of her reputation, and utterly unable to come to terms with the aching love and desperate anger she felt toward her brothers and her father—-toward everyone, in feet, who’d shared in her disgraced and disappointed life. “Such a waste,” she whispered aloud to her own reflection. “Such a sinful waste.”

She stepped into the kitchen and hesitated. William Milford, the patriarch of the family and a strong, unyielding man of the land, sat alone with a mug of black coffee. She looked at this man—her father—-who had spent most of his seventy years being successful and respected, and who now looked broken and hollow. He looked up at her, Ms face set in cold contempt. Alethea forced a smile. “’Morning, Dad.”

He didn’t reply. She shrugged.

Outside, Ward Milford climbed out of Ms patrol car and entered the kitchen. “Hello, Alethea. How’s it going, Dad?”

“Damn squatters tore some siding right off the back of the milk barn.”

“How much they get?”

“Why?” asked Will Milford, with a sarcasm he found harder and harder to keep out of his voice, even when talking to Ms own children. “You gonna do something about it?”

Ward hesitated. He knew only too well his father’s now-archaic feelings about the rights of property owners; he understood the old man’s rage at being so helpless is the end. He sympathized, as well, with the squatters, internal exiles kept in constant motion by the harassment of the authorities. “What can I do, Dad? Want me to go around checking who’s got pieces of our barn sticking out of their campfires?”

“You think it’s okay for the government to steal the land,” William Milford grumbled. “You probably think it’s okay for the squatters to rip the damn house down for firewood.”

“You know I don’t. I’ll look into it.” He stared at Ms father, waiting for a response. There was none.

The old man stared stubbornly out the window at the battered bams, rusty silos, and barren winter fields.

Alethea slipped past her father into the hallway, and Ward, sensing a moment when brother and sister might comfort each other, followed her.

“You been cryin” or drinMn’?” he said, instantly sympathetic.

“Cryin’ while drinkin’.” Her face was flushed, her eyes red. “You have to be real coordinated to be able to do it. Kinda like chewing gum and kissing.”

Amanda Bradford, fully awake at last, joined her children in the kitchen. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her lithe and almost girlish body stood in painful contrast to her taut and careworn face. Amanda had once had a classic cheerleader sort of prettiness; with age had come a more substantial beauty tempered by sorrow and perhaps too much awareness.

As Amanda entered the kitchen, Jackie was stuffing her books into her backpack. Scott, her “little” brother by a year, was wolfing down a double-decker sandwich of toast, fried eggs, and ham. Scott was dark-haired and handsome like his father. At six-four, he was a budding basketball star in the orange and black Milford High letter jacket.

“Where’d the ham come from?” Amanda asked.

“I swiped it from the training table,” Scott said.

“They’ve got to keep the jocks healthy,” Jackie said disdainfully.

Amanda no longer minded the eternal bickering between her two children; at its best, she thought, it was a minor art form.

“You shouldn’t steal,” she said, helping herself to a bite of ham. “Boy, that’s good.” She sighed. “Jackie, want some moral support at your tryouts this afternoon?”

“Okay, if you don’t say anything.”

Amanda walked her daughter to the door. “You’re a strange kid—you don’t want to be criticized by your own mother.” Jackie pulled on her parka. “Be good,” Amanda said, straightening her daughter’s collar.

“Yeah, give ’em hell, Jack,” Scott called. “Just don’t get pregnant.”

“Jerk,” Jackie called, and ran to her bike.

Scott left a moment later, still munching on his sandwich. Amanda trailed after him, waving his parka.

“Take this!” she called.

“Don’t need it.”

“Take it anyway.”

She smiled, watching as her two children pedaled out of sight. Childhood slipped by so quickly, she reflected; happiness, sometimes, vanished even faster. She wondered idly if she and Peter would have had more children if the Transition hadn’t come. They hadn’t even thought of it then; everything seemed so hard, so different, that along with everyone else they had concentrated on protecting what they had, not reaching out for more.

As she turned to go back into the house, a darting motion at the outer edge of her field of vision caused her to stop abruptly. There was something animallike and fugitive in what she’d glimpsed, as though a fox or a raccoon had found itself cornered by daylight. But in fact the skittish movement wasn’t made by an animal. the creature was a human child. As the child tried to sneak abound the corner of the garage, Amanda realized that it must have been foraging in the garbage cans that were kept there.

The child wore patched and thrown-together castoffs to fight the sharp cold. The first thing Amanda thought of was Scott’s unwanted parka, but she did not take her eyes off the child, who, she could now see, was a girl. The little girl froze under Amanda’s gaze like a rabbit caught in headlights. Amanda approached slowly and carefully. She thought she might scare the girl further if she tried to make eye contact—the girl’s wide-eyed stare was pure fear—-so she let her gaze range over the tatterdemalion outfit: a grown-up-sized plaid shirt whose frayed tails dangled below the waistband of a patched green woolen jacket, oversized boots stuffed with rags. Amanda knew, with a mother’s instinct, that this child was loved: the boots had been carefully packed to keep out the cold, and although none of the patches on the jacket matched, they’d been securely sewn.

Amanda stopped a few feet from the little girl and extended her hand in a universal gesture of friendship. “Hi, honey. What’s your name?”

The child did not speak. As Amanda knelt in front of her, the girl regarded her with solemn suspicion.

“Where are you from?” she asked, although she knew the answer. The Exile child remained silent.

“Did your Mends run away and leave you?” The child nodded. “Would you like to come inside a minute? It’s warm and I could fix you a cup of hot milk.” The temptation was too great to resist, Slowly the child nodded. Amanda reached for her hand and the child cautiously accepted. At that very moment, a woman shot out from behind the trees and seized the child's arm.

“No,” she cried, pulling the girl toward her. She too was dressed in a makeshift costume. “I’m sorry, we’re lost. Come on, Dierdre.”

“It’s all right,” protested Amanda, but the child’s mother was already vanishing, dragging the weeping girl toward the open road. She was too far gone in her mistrust to accept the kindness of this stranger; kindness carried danger with it.

Amanda stood perfectly still as the pair of squatters retreated. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wondered for a moment what sort of life the Exile mother had had before the troubles, the Transition. Perhaps she’d been a doctor, a professor, a patriot of some sort who had some to be thought dangerous. The Transition turned everyone’s fortunes upside down, and Amanda flushed at the realization that her own position was one of the few that had actually improved. Before the takeover, Peter Bradford had been . . . what? A minor official among dozens of others, living, as did almost everyone in Milford County, in the shadow of the Milford clan. Life was so easy then—a new car every third year, meat on the table, and, with prudent saving, college for the children. An easy life—but where was the distinction? No, the distinction did not lie with men like Peter Bradford, but with those like Devin Milford, the risk takers, the windmill jousters, the dreamers.