A Shark if I Ever Knew One
May. 24th, 2023 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonCharacters: Ramir, Rhea [I am taking the wiki's word for it that the protagonist's name is Rhea]; minor appearances from Nadine; the looming absence of Rhea's mom
Word count: ~13.5k
Warnings: I can comfortably call this one a PG-13 on language. Also contains: alcohol use, #aesthetic tobacco use, a brief scene implying ongoing psychological abuse of a teenager by their guardian.
Notes: The version of this fic on AO3 does some stuff with images; for readability purposes, this version contains none such. A person might ask me, "Dreamwidth user shinon, why have you gone to a bunch of trouble crossposting the entire text in three places, in addition to maintaining parent text file on your hard drive, with more or less drastic coding differences in each place? When you know you are prone to going back and tweaking individual lines after a thing is posted, and if you fail to control the impulse you will experience many stupid version-control problems?" Well, hypothetical interlocutor, the answer is that I exercise poor judgment!
I could say a lot more about the process behind this story (it was a weird yet enjoyable ride) - but I think that's enough talking out of me.
5.
[○ ~ △] [△ ~ △]
The road grinds people down into different shapes. The early mornings, the late nights, the hours of boredom punctuated by random near-death experiences; the loading and unloading, packing and repacking, trying to jigsaw-puzzle more merchandise into the truck bed; all the chitter-chatter and wheeling and dealing just to maintain the network you've already got, much less winning over new contacts; rolling into town and finding out there's a water ration and no way all twenty of you get to use the showers, here's a sponge, make do, and tonight you'll be sleeping in the cab you share with another person who was handed a sponge and told to make do. Anyone who says they don't get tired is a liar. But people get tired different - Sebas is a crier, for one. Lilja gets sarcastic. Even Nadine, who's been doing this forever, has her tells. She's not easy to read at the best of times, but after a grueling circuit she gets sanded down perfectly smooth - you can't talk to her, she's not giving you anything.
You guess this is why she deputized you to talk to Sebas, that time in Clifton. He was wheeling barrels of pecans to the staging area on a little hand cart and all the while gushing out of his eyes, and she clucked her tongue and muttered "He's gonna spill something." You told him to go sit down and have a lemonade and leave this to the pros. You don't get tired.
Also, by "the pros," you mean Johann.
That ended up being Sebas's last go-round with the caravan. He couldn't hack it, and went home. You don't miss all the sniffling, that's for sure.
But it was someone else's last run, too.
Weird enough that [REDACTED] died, but, man... Dying in friggin' Bartow. You can imagine worse things, but it takes some effort.
You and she weren't close or anything. You admired her, from a distance. She had the soul of a pirate. That first caravan circuit after she was gone, you kept miscounting the number of trucks, and at night sometimes you'd lie awake waiting to hear her get the guitar out like she used to. You'll never hear her play again, and you'll never get to ask what she saw in that dusty junkheap of a town. On the nights when it hit you, you'd go for a walk and have a smoke about it, and console yourself with the knowledge you would never have to see your old street again.
So what's Nadine do, the next month, but take the caravan back to Bartow? You could've sworn, with [REDACTED] gone, she'd have no reason to keep pissing the Rilker family off like that, but here you all are, rolling into town like nothing's changed.
And there's [REDACTED]'s truck waiting to join you, like nothing's changed.
She had a daughter, couplathree years younger than you. So now the daughter has the truck. Okay. So maybe the daughter has the sense to realize that place is poison.
You keep your distance, first leg of the trip, up to Pachenco. You don't know what you're gonna do if she recognizes you. 'Cause if she recognizes you, she'll recognize who you used to be when you lived there. You're a man of the road now - plus, you just turned twenty-five, nice convenient milestone, so you deserve a clean slate on whatever dumb angsty stuff came before. Didn't count.
You're curious about her, though. She looks a lot like her mom, but she's quieter. Drives all careful. Makes sense, for a complete greenhorn, but - why is she a greenhorn? Didn't [REDACTED] tell her anything?
Nobody ever showed you the ropes out here, but you had no reason to expect that. She could've expected help, and isn't getting any, and that annoys you, even if you never hear her complain.
You still haven't made up your mind to approach her by the time you're in Clifton. The second afternoon in town, when you're not expecting it, she approaches you.
"Aren't you Ramir?"
Busted.
Wondering how much she remembers, you say, "Aren't you Rhea?"
She smiles. "That's me."
You're sitting on the hood of Maciej's truck, still digesting lunch. It was a good lunch, some kinda spicy bean situation with corn chips, so you feel kindly disposed toward this youngster looking up at you from the loading dock.
"I've been making the rounds trying to meet the whole caravan," she says. She holds her hand up toward you, but the angle's weird so you have to scoot closer to her on the hood to reach down and shake it. It's not super dignified. But the two of you shake hands, and her eyes crease the way you remember her mom's doing. "But I know I've seen you before. You grew up on Junction Street, right? Catty-corner from the -"
"From the coffeeshop, yeah." If she goes on in this vein all your kind feelings toward her are gonna dry up and blow away. "It was a long time ago." You clear your throat. "Anyone talk to you about our next stop?"
"Bukam Boro?" she says.
"Yeah. It's gonna look real familiar, trust me. One of those one-stoplight towns, even back in the gasoline days. Now they don't even need the one. But Nadine just has to stop every time and chat with this weird hippie chick who..." You think back sourly on the time Matilde the matcha woman tried to badger you into her stupid fortune-telling ceremony. You refused, and you weren't polite about it. But that's on her for being pushy. Ever since, she's looked at you with pity and disdain, and it really grinds your gears to be getting that look from a failed entrepreneur out in Nowheresville. "Nah," you say, "I won't spoil the surprise."
"Oh, dear," she says, frowning, but her eyes look amused.
"The other thing you gotta watch for is, the road surface out that way is terrible." You lean back on your hands. Honestly, you're kinda getting into this role, dispensing your wisdom to the fledgling. She's playing her part well, too - she listens attentively, even gets her map out to follow along. At some point you find you've hopped down off the hood and waved for her to spread her map out on the sun-warmed surface. You watch over her shoulder while she traces out the route with a finger, and applies shreds of sticky note to points of interest, and under your advice she adds a couple more.
She has the same exact handwriting as [REDACTED].
You don't notice when Maciej comes back. You don't notice when he climbs back into the cab. He leans hard on the truck's horn, and you and Rhea both jump about a foot in the air. Maciej smiles at you through the windshield and waves like "my lunch break's over, go make trouble somewhere else."
Rhea folds up her map and flashes you a rueful grin, still a little shaky after the blast of noise. "Thanks, Ramir. Talk soon."
You've got business of your own to conduct, so you don't see Rhea the next day. Mostly your business is blackjack, plus you asked a guy to look into some stuff for you, and conveniently enough you can follow up with him at Natsumi's Blackjack Parlor. You stroll back to the Clifton roadhouse about three in the morning, no richer and no poorer - better than you usually do at Natsumi's - but with a couple new ideas burning in your brain.
In the parking lot, the cabin light is on in [REDACTED]'s truck.
You stroll over to see what's what. Rhea is rummaging in the glove box. You say, "Got a problem?"
She starts. "Oh! It's just you. Well - I can't tell if there's a problem. Nadine says we're rolling out tomorrow."
You look at your watch. "Today?"
Her mouth twists. "Today. Great. I have to make sure I'm on track - picking up enough inventory -" She's taken a small ledger out of the glove compartment, and she waves it at you, looking frazzled. "If I can't make the whole circuit this time, I have to be pretty aggressive. The store..."
Ah. So that's what her deal is. "Y'know, for most people, caravan driving is a full-time job itself. Trying to run the store on top of that is a little much."
"My mom -"
"Yeah, I knew your mom. There's not a lot of people who could do what she did."
Her gaze snaps indignantly up to yours. "Well, maybe I'm one of them."
You turn away. "There's no helping some people," you say to the empty air, and head for the roadhouse door. You're not driving, so you at least can take catnaps in the truck after you all roll out. But no sense in not using a bed for as long as it's available.
"Ramir," Rhea calls out, and you stop. After a pause, she says, "Is it me, or are the stars weird here?"
You look up. "Fewer of 'em," you conclude. The mountains to the north take a huge bite out of the sky; days are cooler and nights are blacker in their shadow. Your first trip with the caravan, even younger than she is now, you couldn't get over it - felt claustrophobic here, couldn't get your shoulders down from around your ears. Funny how you've stopped noticing. "Bartow's flatter and it has less light pollution. G'night." And she doesn't stop you a second time.
But in the morning, some of your ideas of last night have crystallized. Rhea looks at you blearily as you climb into her truck and say, "Got a proposition for you."
Three hours later the two of you are northbound. You expected this to be a harder sell. Rhea obeyed Nadine without question the first week out of Bartow, and watching from a distance, you're pretty sure she got snowed by that old hag in Pachenco, bowing to her air of authority or maybe the unlimited stream of canapes. So you had reason to worry she'd be more of a rule follower - go along quietly in the channels that old folks have carved for you, be respectful, that kinda crap. But the caravan continues on the road to Bukam Boro, and Rhea casually peels off onto the overpass and doesn't look back.
"Attagirl!"
She changes gears to get up the hill. "Don't patronize me. And stay awake – if we're doing this, I need you to help navigate."
You catch sight of yourself in the rear-view: you're grinning like a maniac. You tone it down a little. "Sure thing," you say, and once she's merged onto the Anka road and has a hand free you slap a bottle of cold brew into her palm. You're a useful guy to have riding shotgun, at least when it suits you.
They say there used to be thousands of trucks on this road every day. As far back as you're aware, only the middle two lanes have been usable. You can't seriously imagine a world where they needed all eight.
"There's a good rest stop in another seventy miles," you tell her. "There are a bunch along this road, but they're kinda far apart. I think they spaced them out based on how fast a gas engine went in the old days. Our modern stuff's a lot slower."
Rhea absently pats the dashboard, like she's trying to reassure her truck after hearing you say such mean things about it. "Seventy miles I can do," she says. "I can take a walk and put the solar panels out for an hour or two." Seems reasonable. You nod. She says, "In the meantime, entertain me. You said you had stories?"
"Oh, yeah. Tons."
"Now, when you say that..." She doesn't take her eyes off the road, but she tilts her head to one side, inquisitive. "Do you mean stories about the road, or do you mean talking trash about people back home?"
That same idiot grin is trying to steal over your face again. This is nice, isn't it? Road tripping. A couple of escaped Bartowers against the world. "Pick your poison."
Things you learn about Rhea on the way to Anka: she's a little naive, but she's pretty smart. She's also, just, hopelessly cool. She drives stick like it's second nature, she's got more muscle power than you'd expect, and she isn't afraid of jack squat. She can't play any instruments, but she's got a real set of pipes on her. Musically, at least, her mom was the complete opposite.
One evening she's singing a wordless song to herself and you almost bust a gut laughing, because – this one is supposed to have words, about poisoning your husband and shacking up with the woman next door. She has no clue. She's just singing "ba dum ba da da" all sweet and sentimental, and getting annoyed at your increasing hilarity. You explain yourself and she doesn't believe you.
You take the issue to a jury of your peers: a small party of southbound travelers is already at that night's campsite. "Hey," you say to them, "do me a favor, name this tune for my friend here?" and hum the first few bars.
The group reaches no consensus on what the song's called. Regional variation. But they definitely agree it involves warfarin. A middle-aged lady and her husband actually sing the whole thing – must be pretty secure in their marriage, huh? Or maybe they don't keep rat poison in their house so she won't be tempted. Maybe their neighbors aren't hot enough. You could riff on this all night.
Rhea thanks them, unusually curt, and goes back to her truck.
Alarmed, you follow her. She is your ride, after all. She says, "Mom played that song sometimes. I didn't want to know what it was about. I didn't need to know."
[REDACTED] has only been dead two months and change. You feel like a complete bastard. "Sorry," you say. She nods in acknowledgment. "But maybe, like... Now you know something new about her. Playing that song for a little kid – she had a weird sense of humor. That's something."
After a long time she says, "I guess." The distant campfire behind you is reflected in her eyes. She says, "I have to keep her store running. Nadine's giving me a five-month trial period – if I can't satisfy her, they're killing the Bartow route. That'll finish the store for sure. Probably all of Bartow. And everything I have left of Mom's."
Your mind skitters off in two directions at once. One: poor kid. Two: If the stakes are that high, and Rhea needs Nadine's goodwill that bad... She may have shot herself in the foot here, ditching the caravan. She can rejoin them in Aldhurst, but Nadine's gonna be pissed.
...Which, thinking fast, is actually another win for you. You get a lift to Anka, and you get Bartow dropped? Lucky day. Quick, write down some lottery numbers.
You don't know how bad you should feel about this. It's not like it'd accomplish anything if you did.
Rhea doesn't want to talk to you any more tonight. You head downwind, away from the truck and the campsite both, to find a nice clearing to look at the sky. You fumble for your lighter and a crumpled pack of smokes. A ways away you hear a guitar playing, or maybe you don't.
Rhea forgives you for the murder ballad business. You cut her some slack for taking it so weird. Even setting aside her mom being dead, she's never been this far away from home for this long. You can imagine that a person, or at least a person who doesn't totally and unequivocally hate their home, might get a little messed up about it. Being an accomplished hater yourself, you can't relate, but that's what you imagine.
Just to make sure everything's good between the two of you - you don't want your driver pissed off at you, it's basic self-preservation - for the next night's stop you give her directions to someplace cool.
These places used to be called "malls." Sorta like what they have in Pachenco, and you've heard rumors that one still exists on the first couple floors of Rilker Towers - but basically a big ol' shopping district with a roof on it. They turned this one into apartments, but they left all the shop signs up. Used to have a glass elevator, too, but no one's been able to move it in a while, so now it's only a tiny glass room.
When you pull in, one of the first signs you see says PRETZELS. This guy Eduardo thought it'd be funny to set up in there and just kinda resume selling pretzels. Has this whole shtick about how it's a family business he inherited from his aunt - none of it's true, but he does a good pretzel. Ask nice, and he'll cut one crossways and make it a sandwich. You foot the bill, and you and Rhea eat your pretzel sandwiches in a big field behind the mall. In places, crumbling slabs of white-striped tarmac can be seen through the grass.
She says, "Should be two more days to Anka, if the weather holds. I don't like those clouds - the battery isn't recharging as fast as I want."
"Yeah, wait 'til you try this run in the winter. You have to drive it at a crawl." It occurs to you that you haven't had a conversation about how long this drive will take - she must've worked it out herself, from the maps and her average speed. And her math matches your experience. Yeah, it's about two days from here. You start thinking, Hey, this kid'll do okay.
"The caravan makes the same arrival schedule in all seasons," she says, frowning. "Wonder how they compensate for that."
"Practice," you say. "And they build a little slop into the timing." Sandwich done, you wipe mustard off your hands and look around for wherever they're composting napkins out here. "And they're still late more often than you think."
She says wistfully, "I can count on my fingers the number of times Mom was home late."
Travel wears people out - maybe this is how it wears on her. You could swear she was less of a downer when you first left Clifton.
Most people in the caravan would say being a downer is your job. But weirdly, you haven't felt like it, this run.
You like Rhea. You wish her the best. You have your doubts she's really taking your advice to heart, but there's only so much a guy can do. You reach Anka on good terms; she puts the truck in park; you say without fanfare "Here's my stop" and jump down onto the concrete.
She leans out the door to ask you, "How do you feel about hugs? Are you a hugger?"
Which is just disgusting. It's the Bartow in her coming out. If she'd gone for it, you would have let her, but she had to go and ask. Adjusting the straps of your backpack, you scoff, "Have you met me?" You take a couple steps back, point her attention to a signboard overhead. "Road signage is actually pretty good in the city. Number 6 Southeast will get you to Aldhurst when you're done here. Watch for potholes."
She looks lost.
Patiently, you say, "You can buy a lot of old tech here. Stuff the yokels have never seen before. It'll be good for your shop." This may or may not be true. The main market for your little side hustle is along the coast, where you get a lot more for nostalgic gizmos than your average Bartower can fork over. But she's welcome to try. Maybe it works, maybe her shop goes under, won't cost you any sleep. "I gotta go see a man about a railroad. Thanks. Take care of yourself."
Anka smells like wet cement and hot metal, and sizzles with steam where the two meet. The gray blur of the sky is reflected in hundreds of plate-glass windows. Pigeons everywhere - they look like the same type as in Bartow, only bigger, but what would you know about that, you're not a birdologist.
You swore an oath to yourself in your teens, you'll die before you put down roots anywhere. But you like Anka just fine. And right now, it's the place to be.
For actually laying the rail, there's no shortage of labor available, plus a whole army of jailbroken Rilker bots. They can knock the thing out in two-three weeks, all they need is someone to ferry them down to the work site. There are lots of abandoned rails they can tie into across the plains, they can take their pick, it's all about ease of access. This line has to be laid down parallel to a known road, and if you know anything, you know roads.
"You want a straight shot across the interior," you tell the railroad planning committee. The number of favors you had to cash in to get here, you expected it to be more formal than a bunch of thirtysomethings and a handful of androids huddled over a bunch of maps in a garage. The coffee isn't even good. Then again, word on the street is the Commission voted the repairs down eight or nine times, and when they couldn't block it anymore they settled for giving it an impossible timeline and zero budget. You go on: "I don't need to tell you the Rilkers will fight it if you go too far east. But out west in the sticks and you'll be too far from help if something goes wrong. Not to mention, rebuild all the stations you want, there won't be anyone to pick up."
"We were looking at the old Aldhurst line," says this butch woman with jade-green cornrows. "Popular destination, lot of festivals."
"Yeah," you say, flipping to a topographic map, "but look at the elevation." You point out the gradient from the western plains down to the lowlands, before it rises again toward Rimina. "That road washes out all the time. Any rain you get here rolls right down it." You point to Aldhurst itself. "And if the sea level comes up any higher, the track gets eaten from the other direction. You could probably do some kinda elevated railbed like they've got in Bukam Boro, but you'd be building it from scratch."
"One of our other lead proposals," says a guy in a pink vest, leaning in to drop a new map on top of all the others on the table. Nice, nice, they're taking you seriously, or they wouldn't care about your buy-in.
And it's a good thing they do. This proposal is nonsense. Guy has a line traced down alongside a road that hasn't been passable in four years. Eight years, for anybody who wasn't [REDACTED].
"That won't cut it," you say. "Listen." And listen they do. You're a young guy, you travel around, you keep your eyes open. You understand conditions on the ground. You're the best intel they've got.
You want to get paid, too, but the recognition is a nice start.
Couple days of debate and they finalize plans to reopen the rail line to, irony of ironies... Bukam Boro. Man, that place sucks. It was partly on your advice they did it, and you can admit the logic is sound. But you suspect the outbound trains won't be selling many tickets.
Well, people who are used to the city might be more jaded about it than you are. Maybe they see cracks you don't, and they're ready to trade for something else. You're used to being King Cynic of Mount Ennui over here, but - Anka hasn't gotten old for you yet. There's still a lot to do.
You take a couple of the planning committee nerds out to a bar and play a billion rounds of darts and say, "Hey. It's passenger rail, right? People get hungry. What's your plan for concessions?"
They hadn't gotten that far yet. That's okay. You have.
4.
The caravan is in town after the railway grand opening. They do tend to show up places, it's kinda their thing. What surprises you is Rhea's with them this time. She's found you in the poolroom in the back of the Oaken Barrel. Maybe she wandered in the same reason you did, your first time: a newcomer in the city, seeing the sign and thinking "that sounds weirdly folksy for up here." But it's a big-city bar, whatever they call it. When you came in here as a greenhorn you did overpriced shots and had your wallet stolen, but you assume she's working from a different playbook.
"Oh yeah," she says, "I smoothed things over with Nadine. We're fine. She gets salty if I take detours, but no harm done." She has to talk loud, to be heard over the buzz. But she's not straining at all, just casually projecting, like an actor. [REDACTED] had that trick, too. Nadine would always fold her arms and mutter about grandstanding.
"How," you say, finally. "No, forget it - why?" You shake your head, chalking up the tip of your pool cue. Not being cut from the same theatrical swashbuckling cloth as some, you have to shout. "I told you you don't need those people."
She pushes her hair back out of her face. "Yeah, Elias says that, too." You snort. You remember Elias - wimpy little kid, some relation of the coffeeshop owner, always hanging around being pass-agg at people. She goes on, "And I agree, for the record. But I'm keeping my options open."
"Aha. Then as long as she's useful, keep telling the boss lady whatever she wants to hear. But always have your own plans." You're sure you've told her, in a traveler's life you can't keep everybody happy. You can't be everything to everyone. But if she wants to learn the hard way, that's her right.
She smiles and taps a knowing finger against her temple. "Exactly."
You can't say why, but this encounter is disquieting. You put the chalk down and twirl the cue through your fingers. You say, "Great catching up. If you don't mind, I'm about to make the sickest break shot you've ever seen."
"How sick are we talking?"
You lean in close so you can lower your voice. "People have died."
You lose track of her, not long after that.
Later you wonder: if she's going around being chummy with everyone, how can you know what she's really after? She can talk like the two of you are in on some conspiracy, but - she would, wouldn't she? Could be it's Nadine she trusts, and you're the one she's being fake to.
...Eh. End of the day, everyone's out for themselves. It's not your problem. Not like you ever had much in common.
You wake up one afternoon in Anka and you're not happy.
Normally that isn't something you would notice. Normally it wouldn't represent a change.
Once you're aware of it, you can't leave it alone. Like a hangnail of the soul. Is this a change? Have you been enjoying yourself here? Why aren't you, anymore?
Better question: why did you ever? It's always cloudy, the clouds get this oppressive sick glow on them from all the salvaged neon, the water tastes rusty, your futon's mildewing, you've been renting this little airless cube of a crash pad by the week and they've already jacked up the utility bill, everyone talks so fast when they talk to you at all. Nights at the Oaken Barrel are getting old. If you slip up and say "y'all" you get laughed at. Every building is the same damn shape. You don't even like ska.
Small piece of luck: caravan's in town two days later. You reinvest all your pool winnings in a tote bag of antique electronics from Big Basilio's. You give the guy at the leasing office your key and the finger. Maciej says, "Welcome back, sourpuss," as you sling your pack in through his window and climb aboard.
3.
You're fourteen years old, sitting on the porch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to your bruised face. Your uncle's footsteps rattle the floor and the screen door slams open. "Ramir," he says, in a whisper that's got all the anger of his usual shouting crammed into it. "Inside. Now." You unfold yourself, slowly. He snaps his fingers at you and points into the kitchen. "Now." You make a big show of dragging your feet about it, and keep your face expressionless. He always says he'd go easier on you if you cooperated, but you doubt that, and anyway your pride won't let you try.
Inside he takes the bag of peas from you and throws it back into the chest freezer. "Really?" he says, slamming the chest shut. "Really, Ramir, out in public?"
You don't answer. You don't look at him. This pisses him off almost as bad as if you did.
"Do you know how that looks? Some mopey kid sitting out on the porch looking pathetic, whatever, must be Thursday. God knows this town puts up with more of your teenage drama than it has to. Some mopey kid on the porch looking pathetic and icing down his face, though, what's that look like? Huh? You want people to think I hit you? You want to make me look bad? Ramir."
Your skin is crawling. "Stop saying my name so much."
"You look me in the eye, Ramir. And tell me this: have I ever raised a hand to you?"
You really did do this to yourself. You really did fall off your bike in the gully. Still, it might've been nice if someone asked, and you told them that, and they didn't believe you. "No," you say. "Never."
"I said look me in the eye." You do, finally. He takes a deep breath, like he's tired. Like this is some emotional rollercoaster you sent him on. "I didn't have to take you in at all, do you realize? I was only doing a favor for your dad. Who, by the way, is sending less and less money every quarter - it's barely even enough to cover your board now. Do you get that, Ramir? Even he won't go as far out of his way for you as I have. And what thanks do I get?"
He has you backed into the corner by the fridge. He won't let you leave until you say "thank you." What you said was true: he's never hurt you, physically, not one time - so you're not sure what would happen if you tried to force your way past. You spend a long time weighing your options, but ultimately, you're too chicken.
You thank him. He grounds you for two weeks and sells your bike.
...But that's in the past. You're a grown-ass man, you make your own way now. You're standing at the end of your old street in Bartow, chain-smoking like you haven't felt the need to do in months, and your stomach's pretty unhappy with you, but you can leave.
And you will. The caravan stop here isn't even a full day. You'll be leaving in four hours and you didn't have to come down this way in the first place. You don't know why you always do.
That willow tree across the way looked so big when you were a kid. You left and came back, and saw that it was small; you've left and come back a bunch more times and now it's tiny and shriveled and probably dead. Trees like that need a lot of water. Doesn't rain much in Bartow, and if no one cared enough to keep babying the thing through one more winter -
You grab a twig and bend, and it gives a dry crack that startles you, that you're sure is audible all down the block. And it snaps off clean. No green in it anywhere.
You shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't be here. But why have the townsfolk left it standing, a scraggly corpse they can see from the window when they get their lattes? Who doomed this thing to die in your neighborhood and why didn't they get out here with a chainsaw and deal with their mistake?
You walk away. The willow switch trailing from your hand draws a squiggly line across the surface of the dirt road, like a snake.
You keep walking, past where you used to live. You draw more snakes.
Absently you go back and draw forked tongues on them, to make it more obvious what they are. You have fond memories of snakes, and you're leaving in four hours. So that's two things you've got going for you. You sit in a tire swing overlooking the now-vacant lot all your worst memories roost in. You scratch more lines into the ground.
At some point Rhea approaches. With a mid-sized brown mutt at her heels. Sure, fine, whatever, she makes friends wherever she goes, apparently, why not a dog? Long as it doesn't jump on you, who cares.
She's smiling warmly when she first walks up, but when she looks at you closer she swaps that expression for something more serious. "Ramir. How are you?"
You snap the twig in half in your hand. It's louder this time. "Oh, just dandy," you drawl. "Absolutely swell." Rhea's dog looks excited. Dumb animal. You throw both halves of the stick aside and he runs after them. "How's the store?"
She chews on her lip, searching for an objective assessment. At length she says, "Getting there. We're not in the clear yet, but there's a few people out east I want to track down - if I get a good haul this month -"
You interrupt, "If it were up to me, I'd drop this place off the route yesterday." She frowns. "Nothing against you, but look around." You spread your arms to take in the whole dusty run-down street. "What's worth saving here? All the time and effort it'd take, you could buy a block of townhouses in Rimina. And Rimina's already there."
She draws in a breath. There's a flash of anger in her eyes, and if she were her mom, you might be inclined to duck and cover. But she waits a beat, and then says in a measured tone, "If that's how you feel, why do you even ask?"
The dog comes galloping back, his pawprints breaking the back of one of your snake drawings, and drops one of the two sticks at your feet. You don't feel like throwing it again. "Go get the other one, then," you say, but he stares up at you with a hopeful expression, wagging his tail.
Rhea's looking at the shapes in the dirt. "Snakes?"
"I just like 'em," you say, leaning away from the dog still lobbying hard for your attention. The boughs overhead creak as your weight shifts. "They're cool as hell, okay?"
They're often despised and misunderstood, but snakes are only trying to live their lives, same as anyone. You understood this from a young age. You found a shed skin once, wedged under a rock, almost intact, and you thought, That's how to do it. Scrape off all the stuff you don't need anymore, and get out.
Rhea is still watching you. "Look," you say, "no hard feelings, it is what it is, but not everyone had the idyllic Bartow childhood you did."
She says, simply, "I'm sorry to hear that." She whistles, and the dog finally leaves you, to give the stick to her instead. She throws it. He runs off yipping. She says, "If you ever want to talk about it..."
Thing is, you're pretty sure she could get it out of you. She listens. She picks up what you're putting down. She's easy to talk to and she's not judgy. Given time, you're pretty sure she'd make you feel at ease enough to spill the whole sorry tale.
You say, "Not likely, but thanks. Isn't it about time we hit the road?"
"There's still time."
"Fine. Samuel grilling anything good today?"
You have lunch with the caravan, and you and Rhea don't ask each other any difficult questions. And then you get to leave for another month.
Rhea picked up a ukulele somewhere on her travels, and some nights when everyone circles the trucks she gets it out to practice. It's a much brighter, plinkier sound than her mother's old guitar. But to have somebody playing something again, however clumsily, feels like something's gone right in the world.
"Hey Ramir," she says one evening, "name that tune," and plinks her way through a set of chords that -
As soon as you place it, you crack up. You finish the chorus: "...And we won't be seeing him anymore." It's Blood Thinner. That song you argued about on her first trip.
"Murder ballads are kind of silly on a uke," she says, grinning ruefully. "It's got such a cheerful tone."
"So?" you say. "Still fits. Maybe you're just that happy the guy's dead. 'I killed the thing that was keeping me down, let me take a victory lap here,' type of energy."
She laughs, although - you're not sure she gets it.
Still. Nice to have a friend on the road, even if you're not riding with her this time. You like your personal space too much to share the cab with her and the dog.
You have a run of bad luck in Clifton and have to ask her to spot you some cash. "And this didn't happen," you tell her, "and Nadine will never find out."
"Relax," she says. "I know you're good for it. Although..." Her expression turns mock-calculating. "I've done you a lot of favors since I joined the caravan. I'm making a note to ask you for something someday."
You get mock-indignant. "What? When you get the benefit of all my worldly wisdom for free? When I bought you pretzels?" You discreetly thumb through the bills she gave you and tuck them into your inside pocket. "Okay, I gotta go settle up. If I'm not back in half an hour, maybe pull the fire alarm or something."
This is Rhea's - what, third run? Or technically her second, since on her first outing you dragged her off course (not sorry). But you'd never know it to look at her. In Aldhurst and Rimina, she's chatting up some of the prickliest customers on the route, no trouble. You're sleeping a lot, during the day - the railroad grind and the permanent murky glow of Anka wore you out more than you knew - but you'll crack an eye open from time to time, from your spot in Helena's truck, and you'll seee Rhea loading up infinite barrels of pickled cabbage and hot peppers, walking out of this or that business with a smile and a wave, shaking hands, making deals. She drinks tea with Nadine, she helps inspect everybody's tires. She's everywhere, and ever so helpful, and endlessly competent. Nauseating.
The pickles are the most revolting part. Once, about seventeen years ago, Bartow lost electricity for four months. Not even [REDACTED] could move enough mountains to restore power any faster. In that time everyone got real well acquainted with shelf-stable foodstuffs. Rhea might not be old enough to remember, but you hit your lifetime quota on sauerkraut at age seven, thanks very much.
You make sure to be awake for Old Marae. One, fishermen wager their lives every day against the sea - so if you get a game going and you can put up with the smell of lamprey, the betting is always hot. Two, the ocean's full of trash, and some of that trash is electronics. You know some of the divers. You can pick stuff up for a song, have it refurbed in Anka, and then charge whatever the hell you want.
Three, Rhea is her mother's daughter, wearing her mother's keepsake, walking straight into Rilker territory. Yeah, she's handled herself well so far, but she's not as safe, and people aren't as nice, as she seems to believe. You're not much use in a straight-up fight, but you can at least throw a rock and haul her out in the chaos. You know where to go to avoid the surveillance cameras, and a kid in the Floating District taught you a trick for spotting unmarked patrol boats. You're prepared for the worst. If she goes in there as a friendly, accommodating, aw-shucks Bartow gal...
She doesn't. Of course she doesn't. You should've known. "Thunder," she says, "heel," and even her dog walks in with this brisk take-no-prisoners air. Her body language has changed - she's taking up more space, not in a threatening way, but "yeah, I'm here, I have every right to be, what about it?" And off she goes into Old Marae.
The caravan is parked in the lot under the guard station. Nadine sits in her cab filling out the paperwork to order replacement truck parts from the Rilker factory offshore. There's always something - Soterios hit a pothole at a weird angle coming out of Bukam Boro, and his sway bar snapped down the center, in a way no one in the caravan had ever seen before. There's always something, and in Old Marae, there are always eight forms to fill out about it. You knock on her window and she scowls at you. The sky is dark green and it's pissing rain and somehow she's still wearing sunglasses. She cranks the window down. "Make it quick."
"Rhea's stuff. Anyone keeping an eye on it?" The way [REDACTED] made enemies, in Rhea's position you'd expect to have your cargo tossed the second you left it unattended. Even odds whether the guards turn a blind eye to robbers or come down and start confiscating stuff themselves. She could've left her dog, or asked one of the others to watch out, but she didn't wait.
"We worked that out among ourselves, yes. If you missed it, I assume you were either asleep or out losing at cards."
If she thinks that's all you do, at least it means she doesn't know about your extracurriculars. Can't get offended at that. You sigh. "She's fitting right in, huh?"
Nadine looks impatient. "What's your interest in her?"
Okay, that does offend you. "It was a rhetorical question. What's yours? What are you, her grandma?" You step away from her truck. "Forget we had this talk."
She's already cranking the window shut again. "Gladly."
So Rhea doesn't get robbed. So her caravan buddies are all looking out for her, how nice. Later you see her coming back from the quayside market with a crate of salted fish on a hand truck, so clearly, she's figured out how to sweet-talk the locals, too. If you ever thought she needed your help, you were kidding yourself.
But back on the road again, back inland to Tosende Canals, she's still the woman who drove you to Anka. Cheerful, unassuming, a little snarky, a little green. It's like she's slipping a mask on and off. Or trading it for another one.
After the Canals, it's on to Anka again, from the east this time. Rhea says, "You know, my contacts in Anka spoke really highly of you. The railroad committee are big fans."
Mostly what you get out of this is how easily she talks about having contacts. Oh yeah, she's got people. Any doors that won't open to her perfect diplomacy will open for her mom's locket. She's just built different.
Anka is... fine. It's fine. The conditions you got sick of last time still prevail, but it's not the worst place in the world.
You dine out on your railway credentials, once, but people say so many nice things about you that you kinda want to crawl off and die. And then somebody - not one of the committee members you've dealt with, they at least would know better - asks about your background.
You're not the most sober that anyone has ever been. You say, "I was born in a truck. My mother was a derecho and my father was the smell of asphalt. What's it to you? The - goddamn - gods of trade sent me here to straighten you idiots out. Gift horse. However the saying goes. I dunno, get off me."
Crazy part is, you still get invitations for the next night. You tell 'em you're busy.
And then, too soon, the caravan's preparing to move out. Complete the circuit. And however tired you are of hearing some guy wailing on a trumpet at odd hours of the night - you can't face Bartow right now. You just can't.
"I'll take the train down next week," you say. "Meet up with you guys in Bukam Boro."
Nadine says, "You do whatever you want, Ramir. My responsibility is my drivers."
"Yeah." You turn up the collar of your jacket and hunch down in it. It's gonna rain again. Wind gusts down the alleyways. "So if any of the drivers ask about me, you can tell them."
The train's pretty nice. You saw pieces of it fabricated, but this is your first time in one of the completed cars. And like you predicted, not a lot of passengers southbound - you get a car to yourself, almost, until an old lady boards at the last second with an armload of potted orchids. She sprawls her plants out over a whole row of seats and then starts knitting and ignores you. So you ignore her, too.
Lots more legroom than a truck. You can even get up and pace up and down the aisle, timing your steps with the rattle and sway. You feel self-conscious about doing it, though, so you only pace in the direction that orchid lady isn't looking. When you do feel like sitting down, the seats are upholstered in real recycled leather and they haven't already had all the stuffing beaten out of them by generations of people's bony asses.
The cafe car is stocked with favorite caravaneer snacks, because those were the names you knew to drop. It all works out, anyway, because the panels along the spine of the train give it just enough solar power to run the engine and ventilation - they don't have the juice to actually reheat anything. Maybe someday.
You have a big paper sack of sweet potato straws and you don't have to talk to anyone or worry about where you're going. You're just gonna end up there. Your work was done when you climbed aboard.
The sky gets clearer as you go south. The train clicks and swings past big golden fields, the rows spaced out for human workers and not the farm bots of the north. Out the other window there's a road, and past the road another field. Sometimes you see a solitary truck driving along, and the train outpaces it in a blink, in a heartbeat. Sometimes you see deer. The train's supposed to have seat lighting you can turn on and off, but it doesn't work yet. So at night there's only the moon and stars and the beacon on the front of the engine car, and the stripes of fluorescent paint to guide people along the aisles. You pull your sleeping bag over you and rest your head against the window and listen to the train. You can feel it vibrating in your teeth. Awake at midnight, your breath fogging up the glass, you get the weird conviction that another few days of this would fix you.
You did good work, huh? Making this possible.
You had no input on the stations, though. And man alive, is the southern terminus ugly.
The windows of Bukam Boro B&B rattle when a train arrives or leaves. But there's no train scheduled right now. And the rattling doesn't stop.
The ground bucks under you. The clock jumps off the wall and smashes to pieces on the wood floor. You fling yourself out of bed and down the fire escape.
2.
The tremors pass. The dust settles. But over the next two days, random things in town will suddenly tip over and smash - the quake jarred them just barely loose enough for gravity to finish the job. People flinch and scatter every time, expecting a fresh disaster. You do it, too.
There were nine injuries. There'd be more if anyone lived here. The B&B got off pretty easy, and some people whose houses were hit hard move into the unused rooms during repairs.
In the first fifteen minutes of silence, the owner, a woman you'd spoken maybe twelve words to - though she'd said a lot more than that to you - grabbed you and started crying into your shirt. "What are we going to do?" she said, but you stared into the hazy red glare, the sun behind a cloud of dirt.
She got over it. She bounces back from things fast, she's always got eight or twelve new projects chambered and ready to go. You haven't asked, but you think she's mistaken you for a city boy, and one with answers.
But no trains have come in since the quake, and a canyon's opened up in the road west of town. So that's both your ideas shot.
This is probably the last cigarette you'll ever smoke. You roll it back and forth between your fingers in thought, and then you hold it up toward the darkening sky, so it looks like you've lit it from the sun itself. The orange glow like embers at its tip. Once you smoke this down you're gonna need to find a whole new nervous habit. Pain in the ass, is what that is.
Plants are picky about where they'll grow. Tobacco - you learned this from an old woman in Rimina who pronounced it "dabacka" - doesn't like to be wet. The floods have gotten way worse even in your lifetime, and there are fewer and fewer places a farmer can count on to stay dry. "Semi-arid conditions," this lady said, stabbing her finger emphatically into the table, "and well-drained soil." You're not sure what "semi-arid" is in practical terms, but you've seen the desert west of Anka and that's probably too far to the other extreme. Regular arid. Arid-arid.
Someone'll still find a way to grow it. But the supply won't be reliable, and it'll be expensive. It has to be grown, cut, packaged, shipped, it has to be stored and distributed, none of these things is ever certain. It'll take time to get going again, after the earthquake, and there could always be another one. So you might as well kick the habit now, be done with it while you still have the choice. Stop-starting at random and trying to parcel out each pack based on local availability sounds like hell.
And, when the shortages really kick in, there'll be money to be made. There are way better uses for rare commodities than keeping all the throat cancer to yourself.
You sigh, and light up for real. Idly you wonder: when smokes are a luxury good, will people still have lighters? You amble down Bukam Boro's main drag in the sunset glow and inhale, good and deep. It almost takes the edge off being in Bukam Boro.
You won't mind, probably. Quitting smoking. You're great at quitting.
You tap ash into the belly of somebody's rusted-out charcoal grill. They used to tailgate the caravan's arrival here, but that was already dying out before your time.
Your shadow is long and purple on the cracked sidewalk. You haul in another lungful of smoke and slowly breathe it back out, as overhead a streetlight flickers on, shorts out, and explodes. You're realistic about your personal attractions - got a wonky jaw and you're built like a whippet that's never known human kindness - but you imagine you look pretty badass right now. Sunset, smoke, shower of sparks coming down. Shame no one sees it.
You smoke your last cigarette down to the filter and then it's over. And you're still here. And if the caravan doesn't come pick you up soon, you're liable to chew your own arm off.
The road is vibrating. You dart glances around at the construction workers, thinking you'll take cues from them on how freaked out to be, and in the meantime pretend your heart rate didn't just spike.
But it's not that, it's road traffic. You walk fast to the western edge of town, and you're not the only one.
But it's not the caravan. It's Rhea, alone.
As soon as she stops her truck she gets mobbed for news. They don't even let her get out. Over the press she sees you, does a double take, and then nods once. You touch your hat in acknowledgment and fade back into town. She'll find you.
There are still some last dregs of breakfast keeping warm in the kitchen. Grits, mostly. With paprika for the real renegades. Rhea sits across from you and hands you a flask, which you raise your eyebrows at - eleven in the morning, okay, we're doing this? - but turns out it's iced tea. Unsweetened, even. This preference of yours is pretty rare in this neck of the woods, and you're surprised she remembered it.
Well. No you're not. She's supposed to work people. Remembering is her job.
"I'm glad to see you," she says, and you want to kick yourself for being so cynical. She's your friend and fellow traveler, whatever else she is.
"Yeah, same."
You talk about the caravan (missing in action). You talk about the quake (bad everywhere). After a while she slumps forward over the table and says "Can we please talk about something else," and you... you feel bad for her. She's so good at everything all the time, but she's, like, what, twenty-two? She's carrying a lot. The average twenty-two-year-old is a dumbass.
For a diversion, you try to tell her about the train, but then you wish you hadn't started. It feels too personal. And for all you know there'll never be a train again. You change the subject, none too smoothly, and catch her up on all the people-watching you've been doing since you've been stuck here. Dull as friggin' dishwater, and maybe kinda mean-spirited, since any of the people you're talking about could walk in any time. But that's small towns for ya. So maybe you're a jerk, fine, nothing new there, better than seeing Rhea so out of sorts.
"I get it," she says finally, straightening with a wry laugh, "you're bored. You want a ride out of here? I can drop you off wherever you want on the way back."
"Where you headed?"
"North." She swallows. "I need to stock up on sheet metal and nonperishables."
Ah. And there's that sore you've been trying not to touch. "Oh yeah," you say, casual, very normal, "how is... uh, how's Bartow?"
You don't say: how's the roadhouse, how's that crappy mountain bike course, did anyone get hurt, is there still that hole in the ground that fills up into a frog pond in the spring, how's Masha's temper this year, are my snakes okay?
They aren't your snakes. Ages eight to sixteen, you had this salvaged glass tank and you decked it out with a light and a heating element and some nice sticks and rocks and you'd catch a snake and put it in your room, and they just - weren't having it. They'd hide and refuse to eat and you'd have to take them out back and let them go again, and try to build a better setup for next time. It never stuck. You feel a weird proprietary interest in them, and they would rather be alone. They were never yours. Your uncle's house was no place to live.
Rhea says, "The coffee shop roof fell in."
You push congealing grits around with the back of your spoon. "That explains the sheet metal." Belatedly you remember to say, "Your boyfriend. Elias."
"He's fine. We'll all be fine." Her jaw is set. They'll all be fine. She'll make it so.
"Well. I can promise no one's got anything to sell you here. So you should probably keep rolling." You hand back her flask.
She looks at you. If she offers again to take you along, you'll have to say something. You don't know what that something is, but you don't think either of you is gonna enjoy it. She doesn't need your help, and you don't want any from her, and you can't imagine anything worse than sitting in her passenger seat mile after mile with the ghost of Bartow hanging over the road.
"You're probably right," she says, in a moment, so you don't have to say it.
You walk her out to her truck. Her dog was waiting for her on the veranda, and he bounces along after you two, and there you go, here's something you can say: "I'd come along, but I can't deal with the dog smell." You pet him roughly and don't look in his big liquid eyes.
"How do you smell anything?" Rhea says. "You smoke."
Not anymore, but you don't feel like telling her that. You scowl at her.
"It's okay." She unlocks the truck and opens the side door for the dog to jump in. "If I find Nadine, I'll ask her to come rescue you."
"Thanks," you say, deflating. You don't really know if you want to wish her luck. Not like she'd even need it. You manage to give her a "Drive safe out there," but she looks like maybe she thinks you're being insincere.
A week passes. The caravan pulls into Bukam Boro.
They get swarmed, too, like Rhea did, but eventually you're able to fight your way through the press. You don't realize until you reach her that the person you were wading toward was Nadine - you would've picked a more sympathetic target if you could. She says, "Have you been here this whole time?"
You blurt out, "You gotta get me out of here. I'll make it worth your while, I promise. I'll pull my weight this time."
She cocks her head and squints at you behind her thick shades. You brace to get chewed out. You're unreliable. You're irresponsible. You're not entitled to the protection of the caravan if you won't stick with it. You know the drill.
She snaps, "Ramir, don't embarrass me. You don't have to beg." She turns aside to the kid helping her unload. "Rohit, see if you can find this weasel a berth with one of the others."
You don't understand. You always thought she hated you.
She says, "You heard me. Now get out of my way. I have an appointment with an extra-large matcha."
On the last leg of the journey, ninety miles to Bartow, you get a bad case of the shakes. From the driver's seat Lilja gives you the side-eye. "Are you sick?" she says. "Do you have a fever? If we have to quarantine cargo, you're paying me for any spoilage."
You mutter, "It's barbecue sauce, it's not gonna spoil."
"Oh, you think that, do you? Well, you weren't there in '56 -"
"And I'm not sick."
"If we need to pull over, the more advance warning you give me, the better."
"Okay, sure. Is five minutes good, or do you want half an hour? I'm not sick."
There used to be these things called radio stations - on long hauls with nothing worth talking about, you wonder how many homicides they prevented.
Lilja drives an uneasy mile. She says, "I don't carry sick bags."
"I didn't ask! Why are we talking about this? Everything is fine!"
You're not sick. You just... don't know what you're going to see.
Last trip!
Okay, so here's how you're going to handle the new face of Bartow: you're not looking at it. Easy. You never had to go kick around your old haunts when you came into town, no one made you, the only explanation is you're an idiot who loves pain. Well, maybe you're a new man since the earthquake. You've outgrown all kinds of vices now, hooray for you.
Let's not kid ourselves, you'd be smoking like wildfire if there was smoking to be had.
Instead you keep busy. You unload crates, check manifests, pressurize tires, talk to Nadine about road conditions and what might need to be done differently this go-round. Rohit stands at her elbow taking notes, which is a weird vibe, but sure. You do all this and you don't leave the parking lot and you keep your back to the ruins of the town that spat you out.
There was a whole crop of new potholes on the way in. Fallen trees nobody'd cleaned up yet. A tractor abandoned on its side in a field, a grain silo crumpled like wet cardboard. Market Street got itself a fancy new 4% incline. That much you couldn't avoid noticing. That much gave you heartburn. You shut your eyes.
Hinges squeak, off behind you, and a dog barks. You hear snatches of voices - Rhea and Elias. You go find something else to inspect.
But you've been spotted. "Ramir!" Rhea jogs over and catches hold of your elbow. "Hey, before we go, you should check this out. We got the roof back on the coffeeshop!"
You pull free. "Congrats." Uneven wear patterns on Soterios's treads. He should rotate his tires soon - there's a garage the caravan can use in Pachenco. Would've been better to spot this back north, but people had a lot on their minds.
You have nothing on your mind now. You're keeping it as empty as you can.
"C'mon," Rhea says, "it'll only take five minutes. Your old neighborhood is bouncing back, it's really great to see how everyone -"
"Pass."
"O...kay." She has no business sounding so surprised. You thought she paid better attention than that. "Well, if you won't look for yourself - it was kind of a big achievement for me."
You don't look back. You move on to the next truck. You've already looked at it, but Rhea can't know that. "I said 'congrats.' What else do you want?"
She's stopped following you. Her footsteps go still in the gravel. "Do you not care?"
"Not one bit."
"All right." You hear a slapping sound. You remember this gesture [REDACTED] used to make when she was really in a mood, shrugging hugely and throwing her arms out and letting them drop, to smack audibly against her legs. You aren't looking at Rhea, but you guess she's done the same. They're too much alike. She says, "All right, forget you, then."
Heading out of town you get a glimpse of the shiny new corrugated roof of the cafe, but you try to block it from memory.
Pachenco, normal. Clifton, normal. Bukam Boro, god, you spent a century here last month, you'd rather not dwell on it.
And then a train comes in.
You look around for Rhea, wanting to point it out to her and say, That's what I'm talking about, that's the future, that's the one worthwhile thing I was ever part of.
Then you remember.
She's probably still waiting for you to apologize. Not to be dramatic or anything, but, y'know... Death first.
Aldhurst is full of refugees from the Rilker company towns. The first evening Rhea gets her uke out and goes into their camp to talk to people. It turns into some kind of community meeting and then some kind of dance party-jam session, she's learning all their songs, everyone's lightening up a bit.
Nadine's scowling down at the fire pits and the ruckus from on top of her truck, on the hill where you're all parked.
She hasn't invited you, but you climb up next to her. "City council isn't going to like this."
"I know it. 'Encouraging vagrancy,' section 119 of their criminal code."
The two of you sit there and watch Rhea work her magic. You say, "City council's a racist-dickhead convention."
Nadine says, "I know that, too."
"Is she gonna get us banned?"
Nadine sighs. "You do realize, this is what it was always like driving with her mother. And I was hoping for a change of pace, the more fool me. I'm getting old."
Business in Aldhurst goes on as normal, the next three days. No one mentions Rhea's visit to the camp, least of all Rhea.
Well, not that she's mentioning much to you.
The caravan straggled into Rimina twelve hours behind schedule, and you're tired. Dog-tired. Bone-tired. Trucks kept getting stuck in the mud, and your arms and back hurt from helping push tires free. Your legs hurt from squatting down to lay boards across the muck for people to drive over, pick the boards back up when everyone's crossed, move ahead a hundred yards and do it again. You're sweaty and mosquito-bitten and pissed off that no one thanked you for contributing, but you'd also get pissed off if they did. Stupid caravan. Stupid... banding together in the face of crisis. You're sitting in the shade of a big maple tree, sucking down water from your canteen and keeping an eye on the line for the truck stop showers, and you hate everything.
It's wet and green here, and when the wind blows from the east, you smell brine. You're already past the equinox, and at the higher elevations you passed through earlier, stuff was already turning red-brown and drying up. It's still summer here. It might be summer forever.
The muggy air, the stupid white stucco. Mud. Gnats. Goats. Old people. You've joked about moving to Rimina, but who in their right mind would ever? Everything about this place is wrong.
Rhea's stupid dog lollops over and whuffs at you and lays his stupid square head down on your leg. You grumble, "What do you want, mutt. Where's your boss." When he doesn't react you start flipping his ears back and forth with one hand, trying to annoy him into leaving. But he seems to like it. It's the most affection he's ever gotten from you.
This place is wrong. But what does your head in is, if you close your eyes and listen as evening settles in... The cricket choir, distant buzz of cicadas, people talking to each other from their porches, clink of ice in their drinks. It's not the same in any way that matters, but sometimes it sounds a lot like...
(Oh, just say it, you big sap. You dumb bastard. Just admit it to yourself.)
Home.
Bartow will never be what it was. It was never what you needed it to be. Those darkening summer nights, the beauty and the ache, that was an illusion and it still is. There's no going back to fix anything.
Masha, on your old street. Her garden was her pride and joy, and one time when you were little, as punishment for some screw-up, you were made to spend the weekend helping her. She had kid-sized tools, but they hadn't been used in a while, and she didn't check their condition, only told you where to find the shovel. You didn't like the feel of gloves. So you got all ten fingers full of fiberglass splinters, and they hurt like hell, and for months afterward you'd get twinges in your hands and wonder if you'd ever really gotten rid of them all.
You know now that you never did. Something's still stuck in you, too deep to cut out.
Thunder licks your hand. You dry your eyes on your sleeve before anyone sees you. You're tired, is all. And angry.
There's a permanent protest set up around the foot of Rilker Towers. Rhea disappears into Old Marae and once again hasn't thought to have her stuff guarded. You take your turn watching it; even if you're still not talking, you won't let a fellow Bartower down.
No way you'd be able to get to your usual e-waste guy's place in this mess, anyway. So what else were you gonna do.
And it's during your watch that she comes back, weaving a little, her fingers knotted in the fur of Thunder's shoulder to keep her upright. She has a black eye. The first thing you say to her in two and a half weeks is "How many fingers?"
"Four. I'm okay, Ramir. I just need to sit... down."
"It was two, but good effort." You make her sit on the running board. Thunder sits next to her and whines at you, tail wagging anxiously. "Yeah, I know."
Helena's truck has a freezer. You bump the lock and replace one of the bags of frozen peaches with a handful of bills. It's not stealing if you pay for it. You give Rhea the bag to put on her eye.
"Pull your sleeve up over your hand," you say. "Like that. So your fingers don't freeze. What happened to you?"
"The protests," she says. "I had people I wanted to talk to, but I - couldn't get close enough."
"What were you gonna do, storm the tower?"
"No, I -"
"How was getting martyred out there gonna save your shop?"
She looks down. "You don't want me to save my shop," she says, sulky, like someone much younger.
"Not my point."
She goes silent. After a long while she says, "You said you didn't care."
Maybe you were right all along. Maybe she's always been the sheltered kid you took her for on day one. You're amazed. "And you bought that?"
Rhea has reduced vision out of her right eye until the swelling goes down, so you ride along and spot for her. There's not much to spot, but if she can stand your company again, you're not complaining. She's more fun than some.
Offhand she says, "Do you want to drive, at all?"
You take this for the big gesture of trust that it is, really, you do, but - you snort and look out the window. "Don't give me ideas. I'll never afford my own wheels. Better if I don't get the taste."
She meditates on this a while. Then she says, slow, like this is brand new territory, "Are trucks that expensive?"
"Rhea, you're killing me."
She's doing much better in Tosende Canals. You move back out of her truck for the trip to Anka, because - whatever peace you've made, you don't want to risk breaking it by having to talk about what comes after.
You're starting to think - there are things that'll thrive anywhere you put 'em.
And there's a dead willow tree on Junction Street, and there's tobacco fields drowning in the swamp, and there's every pet you ever tried to take home and couldn't keep happy.
You both came from the same place, but Rhea's one thing and you're another. There was only one place you were designed to belong, and if that place didn't work out, well - hard luck, buddy. Too bad so sad.
About the great railroad reopening - apparently a bunch more robots defected from the farms, that's how they got it fixed so quick. Anka had barely put all the decorations away from the grand opening when the quake hit, so now all the trappings come back out, the party starts all over. You graciously allow a couple planning committee people to take you to lunch, because you sense your days of coasting on this are winding down.
What next? Who knows? Maybe there'll be another earthquake, swallow Bartow up to the center of the earth. It's a coin toss whether that would set you free or break your idiot heart.
The summer you turned nineteen, the caravan came into Bartow and your uncle's place was gone. He'd died while you were away, and that fast, one of his creditors had swooped in and repossessed the place. Just hauled the old doublewide off to parts unknown – probably to a town that still had a pulse. There was nothing left of the place you grew up but a plumbing hookup and the porch. The porch, attached to nothing and starting to collapse on itself, timbers bleaching in the sun.
Just gone, forever, that's it, good-bye.
You laughed until you started coughing, and you coughed until you tasted blood. You soloed a bottle of wine and puked in the street. [REDACTED] took you back to Samuel's roadhouse. You remember this. She made you sit down, she gave you water in a metal cup so it wouldn't break if you dropped it. She sat beside you and patted your back and made small talk, and you were glad you had her for an ally. She seemed to know something about how you felt.
And then you shook her off. If she knew, why hadn't she done anything sooner? She could've helped you, as a neighbor or a fellow caravaneer. She never had.
You didn't need her.
It's not personal. It was never personal. But you couldn't count on her, and maybe not on Rhea either. Some people will say all the right things, and then go do whatever they always meant to do anyway.
Caravan's last day in Anka and you still don't know what you're doing. You think you've actually gotten into Nadine's good books for the first time in your life, and it'd be a shame to throw that away. But Rhea's in Nadine's good books too. The trial period is over as of tomorrow, but you're sure the call was made weeks ago; Nadine wouldn't have put up with so much if she was going to drop Bartow from the route. You don't think she'd cut Rhea off cold like that.
You handled it fine last time. For some definitions of "fine." But stick with the caravan and you'll never catch a break. You'll always be going back there and always tempted to pick at scabs. What's the alternative, though? Settle down somewhere? You?
Rhea asks you to teach her blackjack. It's the last day before she goes home - doesn't she have more important schmoozing to do? Or is she that confident she's got all her cargo squared away?
Does she pity you?
"Okay," you say. "It's not complicated."
"Then how do you lose so much money on it?"
She's razzing you, but you left your sense of humor behind somewhere by the roadside. "Just because it's not complicated, doesn't mean it's guaranteed." You strip the rubber band off a pack of cards. "It's like life that way. There are no sure things. You make the smartest bet you can and see what happens. It never pays to get attached to... an idea, or a place."
You're not really paying attention to what you're saying. You're zoning out, shuffle and bridge.
She says, "But sometimes you can't help it, can you?"
Eight months later.
The Anka-Bukam Passenger Line is running near capacity now. You've been on it a few more times, but it's never grabbed you like the first time. You don't get the same untethered feeling when you're in there with forty other people, all of them as dingy as you.
You said to the committee, "All right, now that the romance is good and dead, you wanna start hauling freight like grown-ups?"
They're working on it. You drag Nadine and Rohit to a meeting on car design and then you stand in the back of the room with your arms folded while Nadine schools everyone on stowage.
She gives you a very long, very weird look afterward. And then she nods once and strides off back to her truck.
You're still dropping in and out of the caravan as stuff comes up. She basically tolerates you. Best you can do.
If cargo shipment turns a stable enough profit, there's talk of building a spur line. From the north end, they could run tracks out to the oasis, or if people are feeling really brave, they could go east - with the riots in Old Marae and all the farm robots unionizing, the Rilkers' stranglehold is weakening, you could maybe push into the Canals before they'd kick up a fuss. From the south end - well, you've been pretty clear what you think about that, but it's not your call.
As always, Rhea hunts you down before she goes back home. She even walks like [REDACTED] now. Maybe it's the gait people develop after enough hours in a truck. You wonder for the first time if you have it, too.
She says, "Bukam Boro's really turned around."
"Yeah." The latest trend in Anka is rooftop gardens. Landlords and HOAs shut them down as fast as they can, but things will slip through the cracks, for a little while. You two are standing on the roof of a store that does paint mixing and paint mixing only, and under the lead-gray sky you're running your fingers through a bed of orange flowers.
She says, "I'll see you there in a couple weeks?"
You say, "If nothing else comes up. I'll give you the latest on train food. If you stop by Eduardo's, lean on him a little, he's passing up free money."
"He said it wouldn't be fun baking pretzels at that scale." She leans on the railing at the edge of the roof. "And then he fed me some line about disgracing his aunt's legacy. Staining his hands with mercantilism."
You both laugh. "Well, we tried."
Rhea turns thoughtful. "It's not like it's unrecognizable now. Bukam Boro. It's... a little more awake. A better version of itself. The train has -"
"Stop." You put your hands up. A sudden pain in your back teeth tells you your jaw has clenched. "Stop stop stop. I see where this is going. You want me to throw my weight behind the Bartow extension."
"The committee listens to you," she says. "They've mostly been isolated here for decades. No one up here knows the lay of the land like you do."
You cross your arms. "I know. Butter me up more."
Without missing a beat, and with zero appearance of guile: "I think you're also a nicer person than you try to be, and you wish the world was better than it is -"
"Okay, never mind." You pivot away, your face burning. You can't keep underestimating her like this.
In a gentler voice, like she's talking to a spooked animal, she says, "Would you at least think about it? No obligation. I know the decision is months away."
You look up at the sky. You rarely see the sun here. At night, in the haze and the city lights, you've never seen one single solitary star.
"Just consider it," she says. "Please." You look over at her. She holds out her hand. "You know it isn't all bad."
For all her negotiating skills, there's still something Rhea doesn't get. People can talk all day, and understand each other completely, and still want diffferent things. You're never going to see eye to eye on this. Bartow belongs in your past, a big shiny golden missed opportunity, and you don't want it dragged into your future. But as long as you're still talking to Rhea, she's going to try to keep working on you.
But there's her hand, held out for you to shake. You don't want this bridge burnt. The understanding won't heal all ills, but it's not nothing.
You turn toward Rhea. You grip her arm - and pull her into the classic bro-hug, favored move of people allergic to sincerity. She makes a surprised noise, but then she hugs you back. You say, "Listen. You're cool. Don't spread this around, but I respect you a lot."
"Thank you," she says, and starts to break the embrace.
But you tighten your arm around her shoulders. You lean in and tell her, in a low voice, "I'm not fucking doing that."
You let go. Step back. She stares at you, and you don't look away.
"Okay," she says.
You keep staring at each other. She doesn't apologize, and neither do you.
But when it gets too weird to bear, you cough and turn aside and say, "Hey. As long as we're both in town, let me buy you a beer. You ever had nitro?"
And like on that first trip, Clifton up to Anka, she lets you pretend you're taking her under your wing.
[△ ~ △/□] [□ ~ ○]
