Sharp and Dangerous Virtues Page 12

  “Mommy,” Leon edged up onto the bridge and poked at Sharis’s back, “is she a real troll?”

  “Leon! She’s a regular person.”

  “I’d say I’m an irregular person,” the woman said, “at this point.”

  We have food, Sharis thought, thinking of her garden, and she almost offered it, but then she stopped herself, the mere presence of this woman hinting at all Sharis and her family had to lose. “Let’s go, boys,” she said.

  “Mommy!” Leon stamped his foot. “I want to do the troll!”

  “Not today. We’ll leave this”—she almost said “poor,” but she stopped herself—“woman in peace. Come on! Here—” She held the owl out for Leon.

  Leon crossed his arms. “I’m not going to carry it. That’s your choice: play troll or you carry the owl.”

  “I’m leaving it here then,” Sharis said firmly, setting the owl down on a plank of the bridge. Leon screamed so loudly that the baby stirred and starting shrieking. “Leon, damn it, I …” Sharis grabbed Leon’s wrist and yanked. The woman bent over to pick up her baby. “See that plant with the heart-shaped leaves?” Sharis said to the woman. Leon was crying, tears as big as M&M’s streaming down his face. “That’s wild ginger. You can dig it up and chop it and use it for flavoring.”

  “Flavor,” the woman nodded, furiously patting her baby’s back. “Yum, yum.”

  “Leon, let’s go.” Sharis pulled him again. “Are you leaving your owl here?”

  “I hate the owl!” Leon said, picking it up and hurling it over the bridge railing toward the woman. She jerked backward, but the owl landed far beyond her.

  “You killed it,” Howard said, because the owl was now dust and pieces. “You said you loved it and then you killed it.”

  “Let’s go home, boys,” Sharis said. She felt as hollow as one of those painted wood Russian mother dolls stripped of all the smaller dolls inside it. They got home. Sharis made creamed soy-bacon on toast for supper.

  “How was your day?” Chad said. He had gone down to UD.

  Sharis said that it was fine, they had walked to the troll bridge.

  “The troll bridge still the same?” Chad said. Sharis said not exactly, now there was trash in the streambed. She didn’t mention the woman, because Chad would probably want to go help her, and their little group of Gribbles didn’t need more stress.

  “Probably all the park people got laid off,” Chad said.

  “It’s still a pleasant park,” Sharis said. Howard and Leon eyed her with flat curiosity, not adding to her story. She smiled at them queasily, hoping that the two of them would keep quiet. Because nothing was certain. Because you could think about fairness and generosity all you wanted, but in the end survival was what mattered.

  TWO WEEKS LATER Lila was gripping the rung of the ladder, toes curled in her shoes, telling herself not to look down. Five more rungs and she could see over the barrier. Sunday afternoon and she was visible, so she had to steel herself against someone yelling. She wore a jacket with the water department logo. The Vandalia water tower, in a northeast suburb of Dayton. Climb up and she could see the Grid. She’d rehearsed in her mind all manner of scenarios.

  —Hey, what are you, crazy?

  —I’m with the water department. Checking the tower.

  For the Gridding, Lila heard later, everyone on the Homeland Security as-needed call list was called. No one was told why. They were sent to a bevy of small towns in special government cars equipped with computers and video cameras, and at 1 a.m. (midnight in Illinois and Indiana) they received information about what was to happen. An official witness in Paxton, Illinois, distressed at what he surmised was about to take place, drove his car to the local police station and tried to run inside, but the town’s other witness, a woman who’d worked with the FBI, used the government’s right to privacy as justification and shot him with a Calmadol fledget. Troops moved into Paxton without problems. By 3 a.m. the female Paxton witness was being touted on the witness network as a hero.

  Lila was sent to Upper Sandusky, Ohio. On the dashboard between the two front seats of her government vehicle the computer screen printed a country map, her car a moving red point on its surface. Other government cars were moving blue points, and even in this relatively unpopulated county there were maybe forty other cars. It was a bad time for the country. Dayton with its water-hungry industries was relatively spared, and the northwest part of Ohio was stable, being former and current farmland where people were at least aware of hunting and canning and the production of eggs, but parts of the central cities had been decimated, and blue-collar suburbs were hard-hit, too. In Albuquerque and Atlanta there were reports of cannibalism.

  Lila reached Upper Sandusky. The map on her screen changed to a city map. When she pressed a button, facts about the town appeared. Founded 1805. Named Upper Sandusky for its position on the upper portion of the Sandusky River, which flowed north to empty into Lake Erie. Former canal site. Famous for its Hand Corn Husking Festival, which had recently been revived.

  It was after midnight. Behind a restroom in a park Lila saw tips of burning cigarettes. A young woman with long blonde hair ran down a side street. She stopped and turned as if she recognized Lila’s car, but at the sight of Lila’s face she darted down an alley. Some houses had upstairs lights on. A man in a windbreaker carried a child’s bike through a door in a wooden fence.

  Stop now, the screen in her car said.

  What’s happening? Lila thought. Why was I called? To prevent abuses, the summons had said. To keep a record.

  Trucks approached in Lila’s rearview mirror. Troops got out, marched two by two to people’s doors. Huddled families, children crying, the Calmadol truck like an ice-cream van, shouted threats, buses walling the troops from view, medics with syringes approaching the pinned resisters.

  Later, Lila and the three other Upper Sandusky witnesses celebrated in a restaurant in Dayton, ordering steaks on the government all around (and no one ate steak then). Well, that’s over, Lila had thought. I’ll never be back there. She remembered feeling calm and useful, certain that the Gridding would work out. Social planning was a lot like water conservation, she’d thought, only on a bigger scale.

  Now, she could see over the barrier. The green fields were as bright as malachite; the wheat a rustling golden beige. I belong there, Lila thought. I need there.

  ONLY FIVE CHILDREN in Leon’s first-grade class showed up. By the end of the week the principal had bundled the three first-grade classes together and moved Leon’s original teacher to gym and art. Howard was starting fifth grade, the last grade in the school: only ten students in his class appeared. Howard’s teacher was distraught and threatened to move to Wisconsin to join her brother and his wife.

  There was an evening open house the second Tuesday after school started. Howard’s teacher never arrived, so Sharis and Chad went to Leon’s classroom. Leon’s teacher wanted the children to draw happy pictures! She wanted them to read hard words like idea and surprise! She wanted them to love numbers! It was a relief to leave her classroom and butt into, on chairs in the multipurpose room, the laconic pragmatism of the principal.

  “We’ll be here every school day teaching your children,” she said. “That’s the law.”

  “Your kids don’t show up, this school may shut down.”

  And: “The threat of war is not an excuse for bad behavior.”

  “She’s a wonder,” Chad said as they walked home. “We could use her at UD.”

  Sharis had a sudden feeling that praising things was dangerous, that a compliment might function as a hex. Sharis said, “She’s okay.”

  “MICHELLE?” THE VISUAL feed stuttered and restarted—Lila’s office computer was so damn old—but then Lila saw her, the same long hair and wanton eyelashes. “Thanks for talking to me,” Lila said to the youngie. She’d visited the Grid, Lila told her. And afterwards she remembered how Michelle from Agro had come to visit her office, how Michelle had said that Federal could us
e her help. “And I was impressed by the Grid, Michelle. I thought it was miraculous”—Lila winced at her own words—“so I thought I’d call you, see if there was anything I could do for you regarding that.” God, she’d ended in awkward splutter. Her rehearsals had sounded better.

  Michelle looked blank. “It wasn’t exactly Grid stuff,” she said. “What I came to you about. And I gathered you weren’t interested.”

  “Did you find someone else?”

  “Not exactly.”

  A surge of impatience and hope. “Is there some way I can help you now?”

  Michelle was frowning, her eyes darting to something—someone?—off the screen. “You want the Grid?”

  “Ideally.” Lila struggled to keep her voice and visage light. It was easier to talk when the visual feed wasn’t working—as it often wasn’t on the antique county computers. “I do want the Grid!” Lila said brightly. “I like it.” What a sight she must be: an uto grinning. Michelle was as lovely as ever.

  “Okay.” Michelle’s eyes darted again. “Let me work on it a few days. I’ll see.”

  The young rule the world, Lila thought.

  CHAD SAID, “LEON said the woman had a baby.”

  “A toddler,” Sharis said.

  “Does she have other children?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t ask.”

  “Does she have a husband?”

  “We didn’t have a big conversation, Chad. We just came upon her. I was surprised, to be honest. She looked a little creepy. Leon thought she was Abba.”

  “Thank you,” Chad said.

  “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “Look at our garden. What are you planning to do with all our tomatoes? We have thousands of tomatoes.”

  “I’m in the kitchen every day, Chad. I’m making tomato sauce, I’m canning.”

  “That’s my point! We have plenty of food to share with a hungry neighbor.”

  “She’s not a neighbor, Chad. She lives a mile away.”

  “Spare me,” Chad said, turning from his wife in disgust.

  “It’s not realistic, Chad. I don’t have containers. I don’t even know where she lives!”

  “Okay,” Chad said. “Okay.” He left the bedroom, headed downstairs and sat in the sofa looking out the front window. He tried to set aside the horrible thought that he was lucky to have a wife like Sharis.

  CINCINNATI, FOR TUURO, was not a bad place. He could disappear. He worked for weeks unloading produce in a garage behind an abandoned office park. The knot on the side of his face turned colors, shrank, and faded; it was only a small lump now, and he could open his mouth freely. No one asked him about it, or asked him more than his first name. He was paid in cash by a severe-looking woman whose heels clicked on the floor. The origin of the trucks from which Tuuro unloaded grain and vegetables was never mentioned, but Tuuro believed the cargo came from the Grid. Once the trucks were empty, another crew reloaded them with wooden crates so heavy they required a forklift. When Tuuro asked one of the workers about these crates the answer—“You dunno nothin,’ you dun see nothin’,” a quote from a movie called Troubletown—was enough to convince Tuuro the crates held something suspicious, maybe guns. Tuuro slept at night nestled in a doorway of the abandoned office park, a big stick at his side. There were men who slept inside the garage, but they were territorial and drank. This job paid too well, Tuuro thought. It scared him.

  On a drizzly day with a touch of fall in it, Tuuro left the office park. He had some money now, enough to establish himself in a new home far from Ohio. He didn’t know exactly where he was going; fate, he was certain, would guide him. He was walking south beside a road through the suburbs, taking care not to slip on the grass. A car pulled up beside him and an attractive blonde female passenger poked out her head to ask where he was going.

  The car was warm and dry. Tuuro sat in the back next to two daughters. “Scoot over for the man,” the mother said. “Come on, Gertrude. Move over, Edna.”

  “What’s your name?” the father asked Tuuro.

  “Tom,” Tuuro said, cringing as the name left his lips.

  The family was headed for Tennessee to visit relatives. They wanted their children to meet all kinds of people.

  “I have a daughter in Tennessee,” Tuuro said, and he thought fleetingly of showing up at Naomi’s door and asking to see Lanita. He imagined his daughter running down the stairs to him, the way she’d spread her long thin arms. He knew he’d never live this. It was still possible people were after him in Nenonene’s name, and he couldn’t risk exposing Lanita.

  “See?” said the mother of Gertrude and Edna. “He has a little girl, just like you.”

  Tuuro shifted toward the door, careful not to brush against the child.

  “What’s your line of work, Tom?” the father said.

  “Maintenance.”

  “Oh, that’s steady, isn’t it? What doesn’t need maintenance? What’s your ultimate destination, Tom? We’ll take you as far as we can.”

  “Into Kentucky. Maybe just …”—Tuuro tried to remember the name of the town across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, a place he’d visited with Aunt Stella years before—“Covington.”

  “Covington’s so built up now!” the woman cried. “You should see the soccer stadium. And the …”

  But Tuuro had drifted off in his mind, down those narrow Covington streets with the brick shotgun houses, to the railing overlooking the Ohio River, the river slaves had swum across to reach their freedom. “That Ohio shore,” Aunt Stella had said. “That was freedom, on that shore …” They were nearing the river via the highway now, their course slightly downhill, the skyscrapers of Cincinnati to their left, to their right old office buildings that had been converted into apartments for the people displaced from the Grid, as well as the edifice that was Consort Tower. “You look pretty squished back there,” the man was saying. “We’ll get to Kentucky right over the bridge and set you free.” And it was those words, partly, with their unfortunate echo, and partly Tuuro’s shock in noticing, on the opposite shore, what had become of Covington, and partly Tuuro’s sense that he was heading the wrong way across the Ohio River: it was all these things, and something else, that opened his mouth. “I changed my mind,” Tuuro said. “Let me out here.”

  “Here?” the man swiveled his head anxiously. “There’s no exit here. We’ll let you out across the …”

  Tuuro put his hand on the door handle. “Oh my God,” the woman said, her hands flying into the backseat. “Edna. Gertrude!”

  The pavement was racing past, and Tuuro dropped himself out gingerly, as if he were rolling onto his own sweet mattress, and the next thing he knew he was curled on his side at the edge of the road, cars swooshing past him hurling pebbles in his direction. His face was wet with what he thought was rain, although later he found it was blood. He struggled to his feet and pointed himself north, away from the river. Kelso said south, but Kelso didn’t know. Tuuro knew. With each step he became more upright. He was heading back to Dayton, across the Grid, all the way to Cleveland. Like his ancestors, all he wanted was his freedom, and Tuuro’s only chance of freedom was Nenonene.

  “AND PERSISTENCE,” CHAD would say. “Don’t forget persistence. Laura, you mentioned persistence.”

  In 1900, Orville and Wilbur built a biplane glider with an eighteen-foot wingspan, large enough to carry a man. Wires ran from the tips of the lower wings to a cradle in the center of the glider’s body. By sliding the cradle from side to side, the astute pilot could warp the wings and keep the glider steady in the air.

  In September, they took this glider to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and a strip of coastline where there were reliable winds. The Wrights planned to test and perfect wing-warping by flying the glider tethered to a derrick like a giant manned kite. The brothers, basing their calculations on German glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal’s tables of lift, determined that an eighteen-mile-per-hour wind would take the glider and Wilbur aloft. It didn’t. The m
ost weight the glider lifted was fifty pounds of metal chains or the local postmaster’s nine-year-old nephew.

  The Wright brothers came home to Dayton frustrated, wondering why their glider wouldn’t fly. Maybe the fabric on the wings was leaky. They tested sealed versus unsealed fabric: no difference. Other glider experimenters had preferred wings more curved than theirs. For their next year’s testing, the brothers constructed a machine with highly curved wings. In 1901, they transported it in boxes back to Kitty Hawk. This glider, Wilbur said, was “state of the art.”

  Their new glider didn’t work either. It had even less lift than the previous year’s model, and on top of that the wing warping was lousy. The brothers came home mosquito-bitten and unhappy. They weren’t getting younger: Wilbur was thirty-four, Orville thirty-one. They’d heard of their twin siblings—Otis and Ida—who’d died in infancy before either Wilbur or Orville was born, they’d seen their mother die of tuberculosis, and Otto Lilienthal, one of their heroes, had been killed in a glider crash. In that time, death was real even to young people. Wilbur predicted that man would someday fly, but “not within our lifetime.”

  SHARIS WAS USING wild ginger in everything, because dried spices had gotten too expensive. She peeled the hairy, dirty roots before chopping them to toss into soups and omelets or mix them into her salads. At first the wild ginger tasted strange, then familiar and even tasty, then so ubiquitous and overpowering it was almost an insult, and Sharis one day picked up a plastic plate of scrambled eggs—their dinner—and threw it against the wall. “Do we have to have wild ginger in everything?” she shrieked.

  The boys fell silent, staring.

  “You’re the one who puts it in, Mommy,” Howard said.

  “It’s going to freeze soon, anyway,” she said, calmer already. “The plants will die off.”

  “We should get out,” she said to Chad that evening.

  “My job is here,” Chad said.