Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (25 page)

She has always this perennial debate with herself about getting a horse. Some of the couriers like to ride. It probably is faster, she thinks. But not much, not much. Most people have no idea how fast walking goes, I’m up and moving while they’re still fussing with the horse. And so much trouble, feeding them, worrying about their feet. You can carry more, of course. But the real point is how isolated it makes you. No more hitching, no more fun of getting to know all kinds of sisters. Like that wise motherly sister back there who picked her up coming into the city. Sort of a strange dialect, but I could understand her and the love showed through. A mother . . . Maybe I’ll be a mother someday, she thinks. But not yet. Or I’ll be the good old Nokomis.
The wrinkled old Nokomis, many things Nokomis taught her. . . .
And those horses she had, I never saw horses go like that. Must be some tremendous farms around here. Tomorrow when she’s out of the city she’ll get up on a high place where she can really look over the country. If I see a good horse-farm I’ll remember. A horse would be useful if I take the next route, the route going all the way west, across the Rockies. But Des Moines is far enough now. Des Moines is just right, on my own good legs.

“She was one of
them
, one of those bra-burners,” Mrs. Olmsted says pursily, sliding gingerly out of her plastic raincoat. She undoes her plastic Rainflower bonnet. “Oh, god, my set.”

“You don’t usually pick up hitchers, Mom.” Bee is sitting in the dinette, doing her nails with Plum Love.

“It was starting to storm,” the mother says defensively, hustling into the genuine Birds Eye kitchen area. “She had a big knapsack on her back. Oh, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a boy scout. That’s why I stopped.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“I dropped her right at Stony Island. That’s as far as we go, I said. She kept talking crazy about my face.”

“Probably stoned. She’ll get murdered out there.”

“Bee, I told you, I wish you wouldn’t use that word. I don’t want to know about it, I have no sympathy at all. She’s made her bed, I say. Now, where’s the Fricolator lid?”

“In the bathroom. What about your face?”

“What’s it doing in the bathroom?”

“I used it to soak my fluffbrush, it’s the only thing the right shape. What’d she say about your face?”

“Oh, Bee, your father would murder you. That’s no way to do, we eat out of that.” Her voice fades and rises, still protesting, as she comes back with the lid.

“My hair isn’t poison, Mom. Besides, the heat will fix it. You know my hair is pure hell when it rains, I have to look good at the office.”

“I wish you wouldn’t swear, either.”

“What did she say about your face, Mom?”

“Oh, my face. Well! ‘Your face has wisdom,’ she says in this crazy way. ‘Mother-lines full of wisdom and light.’
Lines.
Talk about rude! She called me the wrinkled old somebody. I told her what I thought about girls hitchhiking, believe me I told her. Here, help me clear this off, your father will be home any minute. You know what she said?”

“What did she say? Here, hand me that.”

“She asked, did I mean dogs?
Dogs!
‘There is no fear,’ she says, ‘there is no fear on the whole wide Earth.’ And she kept asking me where did I get the horses. I guess that’s some word they have, she meant the Buick.”

“Stoned, I told you. Poor kid.”

“Bee,
please
. What I say is, a girl like that is asking for it. Just asking for whatever she gets. I don’t care what you say, there are certain rules. I have no sympathy, no sympathy at all.”

“You can say that again.”

—Her sandals are damp but okay. Good leather, she sewed and oiled them herself. When she’s real old she’ll have a little cabin by the road somewhere, make sandals and stuff for the sisters going by. How would I get the leather, she thinks. She could probably deal with one of the peddler sisters. Or can she tan it herself? It isn’t so hard. Have to look that up sometime.

The rain is still coming down hard, it’s nice and cool now. She notices she has been scuffling through drifts of old paper, making it sail away into the gusty wind. All kinds of trash, here and everywhere. How they must have lived. The flashing outside is lighting up a solid wall of ruined buildings. Big black empty windows, some kind of factory. A piece of paper blows up and sticks on her neck. She peels it off, looks at it as she walks. In the lightning she can see it’s a picture. Two sisters hugging. Neat. They’re dressed in funny old clothes. And the small sister has such a weird look, all painted up and strange. Like she was pretending to smile. A picture from the troubles, obviously.

As she tucks it in her pocket she sees there’s a light, right ahead between the pillars of the overpass. A hand-lantern, it moves. Somebody in here too, taking shelter. How great! Maybe they even live here, will have tales to tell! She hastens toward the light, calling the courier’s cry:

“Heyo, sister! Any mail, any messages? Des Moines and going west!”

Yes—she sees there are two of them, wrapped up in rain gear, leaning on one of the old “cars.” Probably travelers too. She calls again.

“Hello?” One of them replies hesitantly. They must be worried by the storm, some sisters are. She’ll reassure them, nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all. How she loves to meet new sisters, that’s the beautiest part of a courier’s life. Eagerly she strides through papers and puddles and comes into the circle of their light.

“But who can we report it
to
, Don? You aren’t even known here, city police wouldn’t pay any attention.”

He shrugs regretfully, knowing his wife is right.

“One more unfortunate, weary of breath, rashly importunate, gone to her death.”

“What’s that from?”

“Oh, Hood. Thomas Hood. When the Thames used to be full of ruined women.”

“Wandering around in this district at night, it’s suicide. We’re not so safe here ourselves, you know. Do you think that AAA tow truck will really come?”

“They said they would. They have quite a few calls ahead of us. Nobody’s moving out there, she’ll probably be safe as long as this downpour lasts, anyway. We’ll get inside when it eases up.”

“Yes . . . I wish we could have done something, Don. She seemed so, I don’t know, not just a tramp.”

“We couldn’t very well hit her over the head and take her in, you know. Besides, she was a fairly strong-looking little piece, if you noticed.”

“Yes . . . Don, she
was
crazy, wasn’t she? She didn’t hear one thing you said. Calling you ‘sister.’ And that ad she showed us, she said it was two women. That’s sick, isn’t it—I mean, seriously disturbed? Not just drugs?”

He laughs ruefully. “Questions I’d love to be able to answer. These things interact, it’s tough to unscramble. But yes, for what it’s worth, my intuition says it was functional. Of course my intuition got some help, you heard her say she’d been in a hospital or hostel somewhere. . . . If I had to bet, Pam, I’d say post-ECS. That placid waxy cast to the face. Capillary patches. A lot of rapid eye movement. Typical.”

“You mean, she’s had electric shock.”

“My guess.”

“And we just let her walk away. . . . You know, I don’t think that truck is coming at all. I think they just say yes and forget it. I’ve heard the Triple-A is a terrible fraud.”

“Got to give them time on a night like this.”

“Ummm . . . I wonder where she is now.”

“Hey, look, the rain’s letting up. We better hop inside and lock the doors.”

“Right, sister.”

“Don’t you start that, I warn you. Lock that back window, too.”

“Don . . .”

“Yeah, what?”

“Don, she seemed so, I don’t know. Happy and free. She—she was
fun
.”

“That’s the sick part, honey.”

—The rain is letting up now, she sees. How convenient, because the sheltering ramp is now veering away to the north. She follows the median strip of the old avenue out into the open, not bothering to put the parka up. It’s a wrecked part of the city, everything knocked down flat for a few blocks, but the street is okay. In the new quiet she can hear the lake waves smacking the shore, miles behind. Really have to stop and camp here awhile some trip, she thinks, skirting a wreck or two on the center strip. By the shining Big-Sea-Waters.

Was it Michi-Gami or Gitche-Gumee? No matter; she loves the whole idea of Hiawatha. In fact she always felt she
was
the sister Hiawatha somehow; it’s one of the few pieces from the old days that makes any sense to her. Growing up learning all the ways of the beautiful things, the names of the wild creatures, learning lovingly all the richness, learning how. There are words for it, some of the sisters talk so beautifully. But that’s not her way, words; she just knows what’s the way that feels right. The good way, and herself rambling through the wonderful world. Maybe she’s a little superficial, but it takes all kinds. I’m the
working
kind, she thinks proudly. Responsible, too, a courier. Speaking of which, she’s at a Y; better make sure she’s still headed west, these old streets can twist you.

She stops and opens her belt compass, watches the dim green needle steady. There! Right that way. And what luck, in the last flickers of lightning she can see trees a couple of blocks ahead. Maybe a park!

How fast these storms go; she dodges across a wreck-filled intersection, and starts trotting for the sheer joy of strength and health down the open median toward the park. Yes, it looks like a long strip of greenery, heading due west for quite a ways. She’ll have nice walking. Somewhere ahead she’ll hit another of the old freeways, the Kennedy or the Dan Ryan, that’ll take her out of the city. Bound to be traffic on them too, in the morning. She’ll get a hitch from a grain cart, maybe, or maybe a peddlar. Or maybe something she’s never seen before, one more of the surprises of the happy world.

Jogging, feeling her feet fall fast and free, she thinks with respect of the two sisters she met back there under the ramp. The big one was some kind of healer, from down South. So loving together, making jokes. But I’m not going to get sick anymore, I’m really well. Proud of the vitality in her, she strides swiftly across the last intersection and spots a path meandering into the overgrown strip of park. Maybe I can go barefoot in there, no glass, she thinks. The last lightning flash helps her as she heads in under the dripping trees.

The biker cuts off his spotlight fast, accelerates past the park entrance. She looked okay, little and running. Scared. But something about her bothers him. Not quite right. Maybe she’s meeting somebody in there?

He’s running alone tonight, the rain freaked them all out. Alone isn’t so good. But maybe she’s alone, too? Small and alone . . .

Gunning up Archer Avenue, he decides to cut back once through the park crossover, check it out. The main thing is not to get the bike scratched up.

—Beautiful cool clean breeze on her face, and clouds are breaking up. Old moon is trying to shine out! The path is deep in leaves here, okay to get the sandals off and dry them awhile.

She balances one-legged, unbuckling. The left one is soaked, all right. She hangs them over her pack and steps out barefoot. Great.

Out beyond the trees the buildings are reared up high on both sides now, old cubes and towers sticking up at the racing clouds, glints of moonlight where the glass windows are still in. Fantastic. She casts a loving thought back toward the long-dead ones who had built all this. The Men, the city-builders. So complex and weird, so different from the good natural way. Too bad they never lived to know the beautiful peaceful free world. But they wouldn’t have liked it, probably. They were sick, poor things. But maybe they could have been different; they were people too, she muses.

Suddenly she is startled by the passage of something crashing across the path ahead, and without thinking springs nimbly into a big bush. Lightning, growling noises—in a minute it fades away. A deer, maybe, she wonders, rubbing her head. But what was the noise? One of those dogs, maybe? Could it be a dog pack?

H’mm. She rubs harder, frowning because the headache seems to have come back. Like a knife blade in her temple. Ouch! It’s really bad again, it’s making her dizzy. She blinks, sees the buildings beyond the park blaze up brightly—squares of yellow light everywhere like a million windows. Oh, no, not the bad hallucinations again. No, she’s well now!

But yes, it is—and great lights seem to be suddenly everywhere, a roar of noise breaks out all around her in the dead streets, things are rushing and clanging. Maybe she isn’t quite as well as she thought.

Grunting softly with pain, she strips a bunch of cool wet leaves, presses it against her forehead, the veins in her neck. Pressure. That’s what it is, the air pressure must have changed fast in the storm. She’ll be all right in a few minutes. . . . Even the memory of the deer seems strange, as if she’d glimpsed some kind of crazy machine with a sister riding on it. Crazy! The uproar around her has voices in it too, a ghostly whistle blows. . . . Go away, dreams. . . .

She stands quietly, pressing the coolness to her temples, willing the noisy hallucination to leave. Slowly it does; subsides, fades, vanishes. Leaving her in peace back in the normal, happy world. She’s okay, that was nothing at all!

She tosses the leaves down and strikes out on the path, remembering—whew!—how bad it had been when she was back there at the hostel. All because of that funny flu or whatever that made her gut swell up so. Bad dreams all the time, real horrible hallucinations. Admit it; couriers do catch things. But it’s worth it.

The sisters had been so scared. How they kept questioning her. Are you dreaming now? Do you see it now, dear? Making her describe it, like she was a historical play. They must read too much history, she thinks, splashing through a puddle, scaring up some little night-thing. A frog, probably, out in the rain like me. And all that talk about babies. Babies . . . Well, a baby might be nice, someday. Not till after a lot more trips, though. Right now she’s a walking sister, traveling on, heading for Des Moines and points west!