How simple it all was, really.
She finished with her last and boldest proposaclass="underline" that the Baptist Women of Haute Montagne should petition the city council to impose a twilight curfew “for the protection of our young people.” It went over well. She saw Mary Lee Baxter and Beth McDonnel conferring, nodding. Faye Wilcox, she saw, had further embarrassed herself by skulking out of the hall.
She sat down once more at the rear of the podium, and the applause, astonishingly, went on and on. Liza acknowledged it with a smile.
Helena Baxter approached her after the meeting. “I must say, Liza, it was a very dynamic speech. I think everyone was impressed.”
“Thank you.”
“I want you to know, you have my support when it comes down to voting.”
“Really? But I thought—you’ve been so close to Faye—”
“The times are changing, though, aren’t they? You said as much yourself. Hard measures for hard times. I’ve never had such a sense that we could— well, influence things.”
Possibly so, Liza thought. Possibly so. And a strange and disturbing thought formed in her mind.
They believe me because they are afraid.
Their fear had become Liza’s ally.
Anna was very sick.
Nancy had doubled back along the railway tracks to make sure she was not being followed. The rain dripped through the box elders and enshrouded her as she trudged across the muddy fields to the switchman’s shack. How pathetic and inadequate it looked, she thought, huddled against itself in the rain like a cold wet animal.
The packed earth floor inside was dark and wet. The air was thick with the odor of mildew and rotting wood. Anna lay curled on a blanket.
Her clothes were wrinkled and old. Her hair was tangled, though Nancy sometimes tried to comb it out. She was asleep, Nancy saw, shuddering in her sleep like a dog.
Nancy touched her gently and a feeling of the woman’s strangeness, faint but distinct, flowed up her arm. Anna’s eyes opened and the irises were a profound blue, the color of the sky reflected in a clear, still pond.
“I brought food,” Nancy said, hoarse with the wetness in the air. The rain had found its way into the loaf of bakery bread, and she laid that out on a handkerchief. There were canned goods, too, and she had left the porcelain bowl outside to fill with rainwater.
“Thank you,” Anna said. She sat up. Her body was emaciated,- she was pale and cold. She looked at Nancy. “You’ve been crying.”
“No. … A little, maybe.”
“It’s hard for you.”
The commiseration was unnecessary; Nancy shrugged it off. “Anna? Please—how much longer?”
She closed her eyes a moment. Looking inward, Nancy thought.
“A week,” she said. “Two weeks. I cannot guarantee it.”
Nancy sighed.
“You need help,” Anna said.
“Yes.” She gazed at the not-human woman. “I need Travis.”
Anna said nothing.
“You think I’m crazy.”
“No. Hardly that.” Anna arranged the food in front of her—her fingers long and china-white, but still with that delicacy of motion Nancy thought of as aristocratic. “Travis is simply—difficult.”
“You selected him. You chose him.”
“Yes. He could have understood. He is still capable of it. And I think the best part of him wants to help. But there is a darker side to him, too, and it is very dark and unpleasant indeed. When he saw me in the Change that part of him was stimulated—its fears and denials. Now it controls him.” She tore a piece of bread from the loaf. “Old, bad pain in him.”
“But if you can touch him—inside—”
“Should I force him to come?” The Anna-thing smiled. “If I could, maybe I would. I can’t.”
“You do make people help you. Even Creath Burack. That time he picked you up.”
“It’s a kind of camouflage, nothing more or less than that. As significant as a chameleon’s ability to change its color. A reflex. Creath Burack gave me shelter because he saw in me some unclaimed part of himself—a dream he had never allowed himself to acknowledge.”
“Still,” Nancy said, “it was deceitful.”
“Not entirely. I paid for what he gave me.”
We do, Nancy thought. We do that. She said firmly, “I need Travis.”
“You went to him once.”
“I’ll go again.”
Anna shrugged.
Nancy said, “It is not futile.”
“There’ll be a price,” Anna said. “A payment. He is at least as lost as I am.”
Nancy said softly, “I know.”
The railway trestle offered scant protection from the rain. Everything here was wet, the air was wet, the swollen river roared against its banks. Birds had nested in the high iron spans of the bridge.
Nancy found him in the humid arch of stone where the iron struts were rooted. Travis sat there, one knee cocked and a cloth cap pulled down low over his eyes. The structure of the trestle made this a kind of cave. It was wet but relatively private.
She said, “You’re still here.”
“Nowhere to go,” he said, watching her, “except away from the weather. I’ll do that soon.”
She nodded and wondered how to begin. But he said, “Nancy—what you want from me—I can’t—”
“It’s the town.” The words rushed out of her, if she stopped, she thought, she might cry. “It’s the town, Travis, the town is what worries me. You don’t know how it is. They’re all so scared. Not just bad times, but people are afraid of all the murders going on. And more than that. There’s no trust. They suspect me. A police car followed me all along The Spur—just today—a police car! If this goes on—” She shrugged miserably her coat heavy on her shoulders, her hair wet and matted on her back. “I’m worried about somebody finding Anna. Or else I won’t be able to help her and she’ll die out there in the cold.” Travis was staring at the muddy ground, a constellation of broken glass. She wanted to shake him. “Travis, you understand? She’ll die.” “You know what she is.”
It was not a question. She said, “Does that matter anymore?” “Matter!”
“Well, what do you think she is? A witch? A demon? Some tent-revival devil?”
That was unwise. He recoiled from her. “You touched her, Nance.”
“Maybe she’s not human—whatever that means. All right. But it doesn’t mean she’s bad or dangerous.”
“You don’t understand.” He was frowning, lost in reminiscence. “She was so goddamn beautiful! Not just that, either. Fragile. Helpless. She made me want to—to—”
“Me,” Nancy said, breaking under the strain of it, crying a little now: “Help me, Travis! I don’t care what you think about her! Help me!”
He sat that same way, one leg crooked, while the rain fell in sheets across the broad boiling water of the river. He had not stopped frowning. “I guess now you know what it’s like. It’s no fun.” After a time he said, “I might help.”
Nancy huddled in her coat.
“On one condition.”
There will be a price. A payment.
Well, but wasn’t there always? It was too much to expect, she thought, that he would help her for some sentimental reason. Obviously he did not love her anymore,- all this ordeal had knocked the love right out of him. And out of me, she thought, confessing it to herself: out of me, too. She said, bleakly, “What condition?”
“Tell me.” He touched her, his hand hot on her. “Tell me what she is.”
After a moment she nodded yes.