Selection Event (31 page)

It was candle light, and he could now hear low whispering voices.

Around the next robot pedestal, he saw the gathering. A dozen or so men knelt before candles, their hands held in prayer under their chins as they whispered rhythmic words. At their knees were a few socket wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers.

After prayers, a hefty man in grease-stained gray coveralls passed around small metal bowls of soup and led a discussion of the excellent qualities of the cars they had once owned. One man praised an '06 Camaro. Another sweet-dreamed a '94 Malibu. One spoke in reverential tones about the '84 Chevy van he'd had as a teenager. “That was life,” he concluded. “That was
real
life.”

And this, Diaz thought, was a real bummer. He never had much feel for cars. He found a near exit.

Through the night, he rode along the north shore of Lake Erie, toward the light of Lake Ontario. As far as he could see, the lake burned. Smoke-blackened flames roared from the surface, turning the night orange. As he rode, the left side of his body cooked and the right side chilled. Twenty miles later, approaching Niagara Falls, the lake still burned, and sometimes oily smoke blew across the highway, blinding him. He twisted up the throttle.

Even the river connecting Lakes Ontario and Erie burned, though the flames were fainter orange and licked lazily only a few feet above the surface. When the river dumped over the falls, they were extinguished.

In the cold hazy light of morning, Diaz rode on, full of life, loaded with expectations, bugs plastered to his face, heading East to New York, capital of the world!

Chapter 57

No rain through March, a few sprinkles in late April, 101° on May 30, and by June 15, most of what they had planted had cooked in the ground. It was time to consider moving.

Since Catrin and Leona were now seven months pregnant, it was decided that the move would wait until after they delivered; they would muddle through until the Fall, when the babies would be several months old, and then move. In the meantime, Xeng assiduously watched the videos on childbirth that he had collected. And as always, Solomon was there beside him, occasionally pressing the pause button to ask a question. Xeng examined the women weekly, and although Leona made it clear that she thought that this was unnecessary, she complied and griped.

On a nearby farm, Martin located a fifteen-foot truck that Winch worked on and had running after several weeks. Gallon by gallon, gasoline was collected, tediously filtered, and stored in jerry cans until they had enough for two hundred miles, although no destination had been finally decided. “The gas situation is getting bad,” Winch said one day. “We've got all we can find within foot transport, and now I have to use almost as much driving to find it as I collect.”

“Maybe we need to think about horses.”

“Could be about that time,” Winch said.

“Do you know anything about horses?”

“Horses?” Winch looked blank for a moment. “They have to have their shoes nailed on.”

....

June 14th, Catrin went into labor and Martin helped her across the street and into the room that Xeng had arranged as the delivery room. Xeng examined her and grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Just like movies show,” he said. And, as always, Solomon stood nearby, wide-eyed, craning his neck to see what was going on.

Martin sat next to Catrin and held her hand.

“I cut my nails yesterday,” Catrin said between contractions. “I didn't want to hurt your hand.”

“Always two steps ahead,” he said, touching her face. “My Catrin.”

Between breaths, she said, “If I get mean, I want to apologize now.”

Solomon stood at Martin's side and put his hand on Catrin's arm. “You'll be okay, Mommy. Me and Xeng know what to do.”

“You're going to be our doctor when you grow up, aren't you,” she said.

“I will.”

“He learns fast,” Xeng said. “He would be an excellent doctor.”

So that was his special aptitude, Martin was thinking. Always looking at bugs, looking in Isha's ears or at Mona's paws or feeling her bones and muscles through her skin. He would be the one to keep them well.

Another contraction drew her head off the pillow and her fingers dug into Martin's hand. Solomon's eyes widened.

“All ready for the new baby now?” Xeng said, lowering himself to one knee.

“Any time,” Catrin breathed. “Soon. Sooner even.”

Jan-Louise had a small silver-bowled pipe in her hand which she lit and puffed on three or four times to get it going. She held the stem-end near Catrin's lips. “Here,” she said, “it tastes like shit, but it beats a spinal.”

She hesitated.

“It's okay, Mommy,” Solomon said. “I help Xeng make it.”

She inhaled a bit of smoke, made a face and blew it out. Jan-Louise held it near her lips again and she took more. Five contractions later, Catrin said, “Have I been bitchy yet?”

He pushed strings of wet hair off her forehead. “No, you haven't.”

“Then it must be working.”

Solomon stood behind Xeng's shoulder. He grinned at Martin. “I can see the top of its head,” he whispered.

Sweat ran into Martin's eyes when Xeng made the incision, but then, a moment later, the baby came easily, a boy, and Xeng handled and cleaned it as though he had done this a hundred times before. Jan-Louise was there with a warm towel to wrap it in and then handed it to Catrin. Xeng put in the stitches, and again Martin felt sweat running down his chest and soaking into his shirt.

The baby was surprisingly red and wrinkled. “If it wasn't ours, I'd say it was ugly,” he said.

“A lot of us grow out of our ugliness,” Jan-Louise said with a smile. She handed Martin a small glass of whiskey. “I recommend this transfusion.”

“Thank you.”

Xeng had gone out of the room, but now he was back again, rubbing his hands with a white towel and grinning. “Very nice. Very good baby, just like in the movies.” Jan-Louise handed him a glass of whiskey and he drank it down and finished wiping his hands.

“Thanks Xeng,” Martin said.

“No sweat. I'm done. You get kid the next twenty years.”

They named the baby Land.

....

Five days later, Leona went into labor. She screamed and moaned and alternately accepted the anesthetic and then refused it, saying Xeng was trying to addict her so he could control her. Martin stayed in the next room and tried to talk to Paul, but Paul's mind was somewhere between terror and escape.

“Go in and hold her hand, talk to her. Tell her Xeng knows what he's doing,” Martin said to him.

“She'll be hooked, she'll be addicted. And I don't know what he's doing.”

“He helped Catrin deliver Land just fine. Do it, Paul, even if you don't believe it. Do it for her.”

Paul continued staring out the window.

“Paul—”

Leona screamed piteously and Jan-Louise hurried out of the delivery room, into the kitchen, and back again, with another towel.

“She'll be less afraid if you're with her.”

“She's going to die.”

Martin stood up, wheeled around and yanked Paul up by his shirtfront. He gave him a hard shake and said, “I've had enough of your helpless whining. Go in there and pretend you care.”

Paul's knees buckled and then caught and his mouth dropped open. “Please don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!” Martin never suspected he could inspire terror.

Martin spun him in the direction of the delivery room and said, “Be half as brave as your wife,” and gave him a push.

Twenty minutes later, with Martin and Jan-Louise holding Leona in place, Xeng delivered their baby with only slightly more difficulty than he had delivered Martin and Catrin's, but there was an inch-long opening in its spine, and within half an hour it ceased breathing. Xeng turned away and wept in Jan-Louise's arms. Solomon gaped at the tiny body, for the first time seeing how quickly hope could turn to loss.

Neither Paul nor Leona expressed grief. Leona, it seemed, was relieved that her ordeal was over, and Paul was more vacant-eyed than ever, as though what limited investment he'd had in the world he'd now finally withdrawn.

....

The burial in a corner of Paul and Leona's backyard was simple. As they all stood gathered around the small mound of dirt, Winch nudged Martin to say a few words.

His heart was filled with sadness, anger, and regret, and he was afraid to speak, lest it all spill out in a jumble of emotion. But they had come to depend on him to know what to do and say, so he opened his lips and hoped he would say the right thing.

“Your child should remind us of how close life and death are. We should let her death remind us that we could lose any one of us at any time. We should never part with harsh words.” He paused, waiting for more words to come to him. Cicadas buzzed in the trees around them and a solitary finch made slow, shrill chirps. “Let us agree to live our lives better and harder, to make up with our time those years she never had.”

In silence, they separated and went back to their homes. Solomon clung to Martin's hand, and when they passed through their front gate, he left Martin long enough to give Isha a long hug around the neck and Mona a dozen long strokes.

Martin knew what he was thinking, that their two pets could die or be killed any day. All things will die, all things will pass, and if they are loved, it is a loss for everyone if the love is not shown.

Part Five

 
The Spirit World
 

Chapter 58

They had decided to move and where to go. It had to be within the range of their gasoline supply. It had to be cooler and have more water than Santa Miranda — they needed a river and they needed to grow things. They looked at maps and told each other what they knew. As it turned out, there weren't a lot of choices.

They would scrounge up enough gasoline for two hundred miles, go south, and then turn west, toward Monterey. A mile or two up the Los Patos River from where it entered the Pacific, the land was rich, and there were forests on the low mountains separating them from the ocean. The climate was sunny but not hot, near the ocean, but not subject to it. And six miles away was the small city of Mariquitas, where they could find food, tools, or other necessities.

....

Before leaving Santa Miranda, Martin took Isha and walked to his parents' house. The leaves on the trees hung limp from the drought. A heavy layer of dust colored every green with a patina of gray. In the mailbox he found the yellowing paper on which he had written his new address — how long ago had it been? It seemed a lifetime.

Inside the house, Isha paused in midstep, one forefoot off the floor, old memories probably coming back for her. She breathed the air and then carefully went to the bedroom where Martin had found her half-starved. She stood in the doorway, quietly looking around the room.

Everything was as he had left it... the magazines on the coffee table, Isha's bowl on the back porch, the two coffee cups on the drainboard he had never touched. When he looked into them, he could still see the long-dried circular stains of the last few drops of coffee his parents had had before they had gone to the clinic. With the tips of his fingers, very lightly, he touched the cups. Images of their faces filled his memory.

When he went back to the living room, Isha was there, sitting in the hall doorway, gazing across the room, and it was as clear to him as if she were human that she also was remembering the faces and the voices of those who had once lived here and cared for her. Martin suspected he would never see this home again. He wanted to say, “Goodbye, house,” but his throat tightened, he knelt, held Isha around the neck, and wept.

Before he left the house, he put a new note in the mailbox:

We have gone to where the Los Patos River meets the ocean, looking for a better climate. Winch, Xeng, and Jan-Louise arrived safely. —Martin
 

They filled their truck with essential possessions — a few clothes, coats, all their food, cooking equipment, and the solar panels Winch had cobbled together, and the few mementos each of them had come to own that connected them to the old times. In a small bag, Martin had his mother's bottle of Ivoire perfume, his father's pocketknife, and a picture of the three of them together.

Then they set off. Martin, Catrin, Missa, and Land went in the car with Isha and Mona, and Winch drove the truck with Solomon sitting between him and Xeng. In the back, Jan-Louise sat in mounds of blankets with the silent Paul and Leona.

“Never said a word,” Jan-Louise quietly reported to Martin at the end of the first day as they sat around a fire on the shore of a small lake in the coast range. Two rock slides had taken half their day. The stars here looked as clear as stars on the desert. At their own little fire, Paul and Leona heated chunks of canned meat from a small grocery store at lakeside. The others ate hot potatoes, apples, and a melange of vegetables Xeng had put together.

“They're nice people,” Jan-Louise said, “but since their baby, they give me the creeps. And if you recall my creep-filled past, I don't creep out easily.”