Never Too Far (14 page)

When it was their turn, they stepped up to the desk. The Verification Officer didn’t even glance at them as he said, “Wrists.”

With a pair of tweezers he tore the temp-tags off. The sound of them coming off was like the sound of ripping paper. What Joe didn’t expect was the delayed pain. It felt like he had been singed with a hot coal. He flinched and pulled his arm back, but Mary hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Remove your hat, miss,” the VC said.

Joe turned to Mary. “Take off your hat, just for a second,” he said.

“I don’t have all day,” the VC added.

Joe reached for her hat, but she yanked it off before he touched it. The VC held up a wand that scanned their faces with a crosshatch of tiny red beams. Then the wand flashed with two pops of light. Mary scrunched her hat back on. The VC tapped a screen and typed on a keyboard. Moments later he rattled off some questions that Joe had to answer hastily so as not to miss the next one.

“You have a
three-day pass for the procedure and to make payment,” he said. “If not, you’ll be incarcerated until payment is rendered. Confirm?”

Three days wasn’t a lot of time, but b
efore Joe could even answer, the VC pulled a dispenser gun out of a holster beside the screen. The dispenser looked like a soldering iron; only instead of a red coil at the end of the iron there was a needle. Joe knew what was coming. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but it had to be done.

On the desk’s surface were several vertical red strip
es. 

“Place your forearm on the red line,” the VC said. “Palms up.”

The instant they set their forearms down, steel clamps shot out of the desk and locked their arms in place. Joe was first to get a veritag. He braced himself for the poke of the needle, but the injection of the tiny translucent veritag wasn’t as bad as he thought.

“Hardly felt it,” he said and looked at Mary.

Afterwards, the VC ejected the used needle into a red basket and then pushed the dispenser gun back in the holster. When he pulled it out again, it had a fresh needle. He wasted no time in stabbing it into Mary’s wrist. Once again, she didn’t flinch. Not a single finger twitched or muscle vibrated. It was as if she didn’t feel anything at all.

To complete their verification, the last thing the VC did was tattoo a code on their wrists above the veritag. He used a curved device that he pressed against their skin. For a few seconds something buzzed against Joe’s wrist. It wasn’t exactly painful. It was more like a sharp pressure, like pushing your hand against the rough bark of a tree. What the device left behind on their skin was a series of letters and numbers interrupted by a dash.

“Next,” the VC said, and yawned.

A guard ushered them through a big door in the back corner. And just like that they were back in the lot where their wagon was parked. Joe looked at his wrist. Then he took Mary’s arm and looked at hers. The code inscribed there was only three digits off from his, but somehow he
was disappointed it wasn’t the very next number. After he let go of her arm, he felt a different kind of disappointment, much worse. Seeing the code on her skin made him realize what he’d done by bringing her here.

Chapter 25

On the bridge going over the river, the tire rim on the wagon scraped along the strips of perforated steel. Down below, floating beside the riverbank, was a huge barge stacked with countless logs that men were chopping and sawing into smaller pieces. The dark river curved away and vanished into the vast city. The buildings directly on the other side got gradually bigger and bigger until tall buildings towered in the distance like mountains. That was the Green Zone, where they were forbidden to go. It was the place where wealthy business people lived along with government officials.

Finally they clunked off the bridge and hit a cracked and pitted cobblestone street that was clogged with more people. Some of these new people were dressed in better clothes. The men wore short hats with brims, and the women wore dresses that clung to their hips and fluttered around their knees. It was a whole new class of individuals mixed in with people draped in rags and barefoot kids scurrying through the traffic. A few of the well-dressed people held cloths to their mouths as if they were afraid of breathing in the air. One man had hoses attached to a small tank that was slung over his shoulder. The air smelled a little musty to Joe, like mud scooped out by the river back home, but it seemed fine in his lungs. Maybe there was something in the air he didn’t know about, or maybe those people didn’t like earthy smells.  

He was amazed by how many people were jammed into the city. In the last few hours
, he’d seen more people than he’d ever seen in his entire life. At the same time, it all became overwhelming, and Joe wanted to get away—away from the strange people, bicycles, horses, carts, pickup wagons, car buggies, and even some actual moving cars.

Joe had seen plenty of beat-up and patched-up old cars, but he’d never seen any that weren’t pulled by horses or bisox. The three different cars he saw right then weren’t very big. In fact, they didn’t look like they could carry more than a few people. They had snub noses and bubble cabs and probably ran solely on electricity. Gas and diesel were only used for larger vehicles, like Arbyters, and for long-distance travel, especially since electricity didn’t really exist outside the city.

To be honest, Joe didn’t know where he was going. He knew where the steel mill was because Frank had sketched it on a scrap of paper, but that was a long ways away. What they needed to do was find a place to stay first. Focus on that, he thought. And worry about the rest later. So when he saw a corner, he turned down it. The noise of the main street faded. This narrower street was lined with grimy row houses, one after the other, with no space between them. It was a wall of dark brick on both sides like a canyon. Everything was dirty and dingy. Joe couldn’t understand how anyone could live here.
A few stunted trees dotted the edge of the street. On top of some of the roofs, chimneys coughed smoke.

After they passed a cross street, the buildings were broken up by tight passageways in between. The buildings had crumbling stoops leading down from dark doors to cracked sidewalks. One of them had a sign out front that read “Rooming House.”
Across the street, three rough-looking boys loitered on a stoop. They smoked cigarettes and stared at the wagon. Joe had a bad feeling about them, so he took Mary with him up the steps to the rooming house. Although that left the wagon unattended, he didn’t want to leave Mary alone and risk her being harassed. Even if the ruffians snooped in the wagon, they wouldn’t find the hidden bundle of diesel.

When he pushed open the door, a bell jingled, and they stepped onto a threadbare carpet. Joe nudged Mary forward and closed the door. Inside, the air was stuffy and humid. It smelled like an old leather shoe. A fat woman in a stained dress sat behind a desk. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open. She didn’t seem to notice that a young boy and a pregnant girl stood in front of her. Thin tubes ran out of each of her nostrils and came together in a hose that rested on her bosom.

Joe was about to reach forward and tap the woman on her shoulder when a man came rushing out of a nearby room. The moment he saw them he stopped. He had a silver monocle like a small telescope strapped to one eye.

“Ah, guests,” he said. “I’m the proprietor here. Welcome.” He paused for a second, and Joe thought he was going to introduce the woman with the tubes, but he didn’t. “I see your lady is with child,” he said.

“That’s why we’ve come here. My girl is breech and I need to take her to a hospital.”

“
A public ward will certainly take you. Sign in, please.”

On the desk
lay an open ledger with names and dates on it. Joe picked up a pencil attached to a dirty string and scribbled down his name and Mary’s name in crude letters.

“Excellent,” the proprietor said. He still had the monocle in his eye. “Wrists, please, so Mildred can scan your tags.”

When Joe looked at the fat woman with the tubes in her nose, she was now alert and smiled at him. She held what looked like a small gun with a red strip of light at the end. She waved it over their wrists and then turned to a screen trimmed with engraved brass and started typing on a keyboard.

After the proprietor quoted the price, Joe dug in his pocket, pulled out the drawstring purse, and handed some coins to the man, who unfurled his long fingers and clenched the money. He stashed it on the inside of his coat and then ushered them upstairs to a room. Joe explained that he had a wagon and horses that he needed to stable somewhere.

“Splendid,” the proprietor said. “There’s a small stable out back.”

When they went outside to the wagon, the three ruffians now stood in the street, not far from the wagon. Joe tried not to pay any attention to them. He helped Mary into the cab before he got in and drove the wagon around the sharp corner and down a tight passageway to the bricked-in backyard where a makeshift stable stood.

Inside the stable, he unhitched the horses and found some stale hay in a corner for Sam and Lester to munch on. Mary gave them some water from the buckets. After that, Joe wondered if they should even go in the rooming house. He thought maybe they should stay in the stable instead. He worried about the three young ruffians. He still didn’t have a good feeling about them, and he thought perhaps it made more sense to stay with the wagon and the diesel. But then he considered how nice it would be for Mary to sleep in a proper bed. It didn’t seem right to deny her that luxury, especially after they already paid for it. Plus, he kind of wanted to see how she would react. He was sure it would make her happy.

“You’re going to sleep like a princess tonight,” Joe said. “After all those nights on the plains and in the forest, you’re finally going to sleep in a real bed. You won’t know what to do with yourself. You might faint with happiness. You might not ever want to leave.”

“Yes, I will,” Mary said.

“I don’t know. You might have it so good, you’ll want to stay.”

“Never.”

“Never? How do you know yet? You haven’t seen our room and the big soft bed.”

“I’ll miss Mom and Dad and Frank.”

“I know,” Joe said. “I was only teasing you.”

He thought he saw her little chin twitch as if she were grinning behind the brim of her hat.

Chapter 26

When they got in the small room, Joe flipped the switch on the wall and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered on and shone with a weak light.

“That’s a light bulb,” he said.

“I know,” Mary said.

Joe assumed she’d never seen one, but apparently he was wrong. Or maybe she wanted to appear worldly and that’s why she didn’t even glance at the light bulb. She acted like she’d seen electric light a hundred times before. Well, Joe thought, if that didn’t impress her then surely she’d be impressed by the magic of television. As it turned out, he was wrong about that too.

Of all the things he was curious to see in the city, like helicrafts for one, he was most intrigued by television. Joe had heard about it from Frank, but Joe had never seen one, at least not one that worked. His excitement made the fear he felt earlier in the stable seem to vanish.

“This is a television,” he said. “I know you haven’t seen one of those. You’re going to be amazed.”

He stood in front of the dresser where a small television sat. It was framed in wood with strips of
embroidered brass on the outer corners. When he turned the television on, he was disappointed at first. The picture was a blizzard of black and white dots and only static came out of the speaker. He turned the channel several times until there was finally a picture. It seemed to pop out at him.

“Aha, look at that!”

He stepped back to get a better view. A woman with bright red lipstick stared at Joe. The view panned down her black dress and then showed an exposed white leg gleaming all the way to the floor. He didn’t know what he had anticipated, but it wasn’t that. On the next channel, a longhaired man in animal skins was racing a vehicle through a desert and fighting with another vehicle racing alongside him.

“Is this wild or what?” Joe said.

When he looked at Mary she had her head down.

“You aren’t even looking.”

The images were incredible. Joe could’ve sat and watched them some more. But Mary didn’t seem to be the least bit interested. She was a strange girl. How could she not even look? Maybe she was afraid and that was why. He decided to show her the bathroom. He thought she might want to take a bath and relax. Back home, Mom often made a bath for her in the cracked porcelain tub. Frank and Dad weren’t happy about it because they said it was a waste of water, but Mom said, “That girl needs pampering, and that’s all that’s to it.” So Joe thought a bath might make her feel more at home.

The tile on the bathroom floor was chipped and cracked. Black mold ran along the seams. The inside of the toilet bowl was covered in a rusty-brown color. Next to the tiny sink was a curtain. When Joe pulled it open, it revealed a narrow tub-shower with a corroded nozzle and a rusty drain.