This Is the Night (34 page)

36.

A tiny border town at the northernmost edge of the Homeland. Nothing had happened yet, Lorrie thought, but anything could. The plan was fuzzy to her, the only fathomable parts being the ludicrous amounts of someone else’s Currencies they carried and the fragile fear that at any point—one incomplete step or sloppy signal—and she would be reborn into a new life of uniforms and cages.

What on good roads might have been a half-day journey had stretched into an all-day drive. Now, Susan roughed the air of the small motel room with one cigarette after another. Outside, grey-blue clouds covered up the warmth of the sun while specks of frost dotted the dirty window that looked out over an old swimming pool. The entire town consisted of two gas stations, one bank, a barber shop, three churches, a diner, and, at the end of the street, a large, windowless box of naked concrete over which two banners were draped, one announcing the grand opening of the new police station, the other, a Homeland classic encouraging people to use the Point Line. Plus their motel. Lorrie and Susan occupied a corner room. The solemn open spaces, the endless discolored farmland, suites of undisturbed lakes—all the stillness unnerved her. In the city, life was everywhere, and there were multiple opportunities for moments of connection. The great gulps of vast landscape left her feeling lonely. At least she had Susan.

Susan twisted her hair with a finger. Lorrie stared out the window at the curved swimming pool, its lines forming the perfect shape of a kidney bean. No two moments, she thought, were ever alike. A small electric pump attached to a hose slowly sucked the water from the pool and flooded a nearby strip of grass. The seconds crawled forward, and the cursive neon sign of the motel gave off short flicks and long buzzes, sounds that passed easily through the thin windowpane. The room stank, but she was happy to be there, and even happier that Lance had no idea where she was. Let him search. Let him keep looking till the end of time.

If the plan worked and they didn’t get caught—though there was every reason to expect they would—Lorrie knew she would be on that brilliant path toward actually making a difference. But there were so many ways it could go wrong. “Let’s go over the plan again,” she said to Susan.

Susan sighed. “It’s simple. This kid, he snuck out of the Homeland and into Allied Country N. But he can’t find work because he snuck in.”

Sneaked
,
Lorrie thought. “Got it,” she said instead.

“And Country N, nice as they can be, won’t give work papers to people who enter illegally. They only want stand-up immigrants with lots of money and a job.”

“So we smuggle him out of N—”

“And back into the Homeland,” Susan interrupted. “That part shouldn’t be too hard. And then, once he’s in the Homeland, we help him get back to N legally. That’s where all this cash comes in. Plus, I lined up some fake employment papers.”

A puff of air landed on Lorrie’s cheek as Susan waved the envelope stuffed full of Currencies. Who knew where all that money had come from?

“And even with the Currencies and the fake promise of a job, they still might not let him in?”

“Right, it’s called getting landed. And then, if they don’t land him, we’ve got a problem, because the Homeland will be right there, waiting to snap him up.”

“Do we think we have a good chance?”

For a long while, Susan was silent. “They’ll give us more directions over the phone,” she said. “We should get a call soon.”

What were the penalties for smugglers, for collaborators? Lorrie didn’t know, didn’t want to ask. They sat beside one another on the outer edges of the old queen-sized bed. Neither dared scoot off the ledge due to a concave impression in the very center, an effect that gave the mattress the look of having been impacted by a small but determined asteroid.

The two of them watched the phone. For a long time now, Lorrie saw, she had been waiting for whatever she was now waiting for.

Susan leaned forward and flicked the ash of her cigarette into the tray. Opening her purse, Lorrie searched her eyes around its insides, just to have something to do. A slight stink wandered around the room, possibly emanating from Lorrie, possibly from the mildewed curtains and the heavy rug. Fear and excitement always made her sweat. The phone rang.

“Tall,” repeated Susan, taking two short puffs of smoke into her lungs. “Okay, okay, right. Mustache. Check.” She hung up the phone.

A question charged through Lorrie’s brain.
Don’t ask,
she told herself.
Do not.

“What?” said Susan.

She asked. “Could it be a setup? Could he be a Reggie?”

Susan made it clear that yes, Reggies were everywhere, even in other countries. “Anyone,” she said slowly, “could always be a Reggie.”

Ducking into Susan’s car, they headed toward the border. Deep holes in the road were marked by ad hoc signals, usually a piece of bright fabric tied to a stick. As they drove, roadside signs updated their progress. “Country N Border: 1 Distance-Unit Ahead.”
Susan flicked her ash through the window and drove on. “Country N Border: ½ Distance-Unit Ahead.”

“Do you think all this is worth it, just to save one guy?” she asked Susan.

“You know, for the most part, I don’t go in for that Young Savior stuff,” Susan said. “And not to be cheesy, but you know that one quote? ‘By making a difference in one life on an individual level, we begin to change and repair the world.’ I actually buy that.”

Lorrie considered the sentiment, doing her best to ignore the source. A warm, yellow feeling rippled throughout her body and she found that without a doubt, she bought it, too.

Ahead, all lanes converged on bullet-resistant booths with sliding doors where drivers presented their documents to agents of the Homeland. Large armored trucks were parked on both sides of the road. Spirals of rusted barbed wire curled around every possible illicit exit, followed by a trench and an impossibly tall electrified fence. To pass through a booth was the only way out.

Susan pulled in the middle lane, away from the border store selling rare items untaxed by the Homeland. Perhaps Allied Country N was a land of bright pumpkins and juicy grapes, Lorrie thought. A begging, one-legged man tapped their window with his elbow stump. Lorrie handed him a few Currencies and forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand.

A Homeland border agent motioned for their papers. After scanning the car inside and out for hidden men, he waved them through. Ahead, another agent, this one adorned with the mitered pocket flaps and purple epaulets of Country N, looked at their papers, rescanned for hidden men, and, upon finding none, welcomed the two of them to his country.

Save for a family trip when she was seven, it was Lorrie’s first time in Country N. From the passenger seat, it was clear to Lorrie that this was a nation that possessed far greater agricultural prowess than the Homeland. Rows of what seemed to be alfalfa stuck out from the dirt, followed by fields of plums and peaches and other varietals of stone fruit of which Lorrie could no longer recall the taste. Deer grazed on blooming flowers by the side of the road. Perhaps such success was because Allied Country N, she thought, was allied with the Homeland in name only, a country that had not yet shipped off all the men who knew when to water and when to pick.

As instructed, they stopped at the first bar in the second small town, a low-slung brick building with a domed awning over the entrance and two neon beer signs in the window, exactly as the caller had described. So far, so good. Lorrie’s and Susan’s eyes fell on a young man with a semblance of a mustache, alone at the bar, a small club soda in front of him. He was slumped forward in a manner that forced his upper back into a sharp, painful-looking curve.

For a moment, the two of them stood in the entryway and watched, amazed there really was a man with a mustache who needed saving. Even more amazing were the other men around the tables, their eyes blooming, hair clean, all of them seemingly unaware of their fortune as they laughed and drank and thumped one another on the back.

Focus,
Lorrie thought. The young man’s pointed cheeks were specked with sparse stubble, his mustache—if he could be said to have one at all—was slight. Deep lines crossed his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. His clothes were simple except for a large and garish belt buckle that had been soldered into an unrecognizable shape. He was, Lorrie saw, only a kid.

Lorrie exchanged looks with Susan. Setup? Clandestine Registry agent illegally operating in another country, waiting to bust them as soon as they returned to Homeland soil? “Well,” Susan said. “There’s only one way to find out.”

The kid began an extended coughing fit, as though little kernels of rusted popcorn were bursting right there in his chest. Lorrie smiled; even the Registry couldn’t fake that.

“You’re really here,” the kid said.

“That’s right,” said Susan.

The kid shook his head. “It’s just, I can’t believe it. I thought it was all over for me.”

“No promises,” said Lorrie. “But the chances are good.” She ignored Susan’s frown. “Tell me,” Lorrie said to the kid, “about Allied Country N.”

Allied Country N, it seemed, was filled up and overflowing with his kind, the generous social services stretched thin by a daily influx of Homeland deserters whose numbers no one had a realistic estimate of. “No one will hire us,” the kid said. “Not without the right papers. Runners are always last on the lists. When I first heard about you guys, I thought it was just a fairy tale.”

Even so, the kid went on, “you wouldn’t believe the food up here. Strawberries so juicy they”—Another series of coughs, his inflamed lungs working overtime to push the phlegm out of his airways. “Of course, I was eating them out of garbage cans.”

The kid shuffled off to the bathroom, and Lorrie took a look around the bar. Loud music with the volume adjusted to soft levels drifted from hidden speakers. The bar itself was angled like a bent elbow. Susan and Lorrie sat on two stools right in the crook.

“He seems hungry,” Lorrie said to Susan.

“He
is
hungry.”

The kid came back from the bathroom, and soon they were back at the border, headed toward the Homeland. A creeping reminder came to Lorrie that if they didn’t do this right, it wasn’t just the kid who was going to suffer. The Country N border guard waved them right past, no inspection necessary. The Homeland guard did not.

“Citizens?” the Homeland guard asked.

All three nodded. As they had been told would happen, the guard gave the kid a hard stare but didn’t check his papers. What dodger who had made it out would ever sneak back in? In the backseat the kid tried to suppress the terrible coughs and hacks that came from deep in his chest. Lorrie wished she had something in her purse to give him. “My parents won’t talk to me,” the kid told them. “In our last conversation, my father told me he wished I had been shot in the jungle instead of killing him slowly the way I am now.”

On a billboard, a massive portrait of the prime minister welcomed them to the Homeland.

“Ready?” said Susan.

“Ready,” said Lorrie and the kid. It didn’t matter which one of them Susan had been talking to; they were in this together. With a flip of the turn signal, Susan cut the wheel and crossed the painted lines, turning back in the direction they had just come from.

“What now?” said the kid. Lorrie smiled at him and almost laughed. The kid knew even less than she did.

As Susan killed the engine, Lorrie and the kid stepped out of the car.

“No,” said Susan. “The fewer people the better.”

“Sorry,” said Lorrie. “But I came all this way. I’m going to see this through.”

Susan shrugged, and the three of them headed to the closest guard booth. “Asylum!” yelled Susan. “This man is applying to be landed in N. Leave us be!”

Where they had expected a fight, they were instead received with shrugs and apathy.

“Thataway,” one helpful Homeland guard grinned, gesturing toward Allied Country N immigration. “You think this ever works?”

“Hope you’ve got the Currencies!” called another.

“We’ll be waiting,” yelled a third. The rest of them laughed.

The Allied Country N officials seemed to be getting ready to close for the night even though it was barely late afternoon. No one was behind the service counter.

“Excuse me?” Susan leaned over and threw her voice into the empty row of desks.

“Yes?” A head poked out from a door.

“You have the papers?” Lorrie whispered. The kid nodded. “Currencies too?” He nodded again. Lorrie heard Susan speak the much-practiced lines. “This young man wishes to apply for landed immigrant status in Allied Country N.”

The agent sighed and bent over to dig up some forms. “Don’t bother,” the agent said, “unless you have all three thousand right now, on your person, plus a letter of employment.”

The kid began counting out the Currencies one by one.

Lorrie and Susan went out to the car and waited. If the kid was refused, he at least deserved a witness as the Homeland took him away.

Five hours later, the kid emerged with the first smile they had seen. He coughed out a million thank-yous. Lorrie offered him a handshake, but the kid shook his head slowly and reached out, wrapping her in a sloppy hug. “You saved me,” he said. His voice was soft. “I won’t ever forget you.”

Susan cut over to the expressway and headed south, back toward Interior City. As the darkness descended, they rushed through rows of white and red pines, spruces, and aspens. These were the same kinds of trees Lorrie had seen on the way to the Facility, the same trees she had seen on the ride up to the border, just in different places now.

“Well, that’s the end of that,” said Susan. “I’m glad it’s over.”

Over? Lorrie laughed. Even on the outskirts of everything, she still knew they hadn’t achieved any sort of ending.

It was too cold to open the window, but Lorrie did it anyway, just a crack.

“Hey!” said Susan.

But Lorrie didn’t care. She stuck her fingers through the slit and into the ice-cold night as they hurtled down the expressway to Interior City, back toward her life that was more started-over and begun-again than ever before.