I finished skinning the rabbit, me, and showed Annie and Lizzie how to pound the acorns into flour. You have to cook a bit of ash with it, to take away the bite. It was late afternoon, already dark. I wrapped the rabbit meat in a pair of summer jacks, which pretty much kept the smell inside unless you were a dog. I put a small Y-lighter in my pocket, and set out for the river, me, to make a fire.
Only I didn’t go to the river.
More and more people were walking to the cafe. Not just stomps, but regular people. In the winter dark they hurried, them, hunched over but fast, like something was chasing every last one of them. Well, something was chasing me, too. I sniffed hard to make sure nobody really couldn’t smell the fresh rabbit meat, and then I walked into the cafe.
Everybody was watching the Lucid Dreamer concert, “The Warrior.”
I had the feeling that people’d been watching all day, them. More and more, coming and going but even the goers coming back for more. I guess, me, that if your belly’s empty, it helps to have your mind feel good. The concert was just ending when I come in, and people were rubbing their eyes and crying and looking dazed, like you do after lucid dreaming. But I saw right away that Dr. Turner was right, her. Something else was going on here. Jack Sawicki stepped in front of the holoterminal and turned it off. The Lucid Dreamer, in his powerchair, with that smile that always feels like warm sunlight, disappeared.
“People of East Oleanta,” Jack said, and stopped. He must of realized, him, that he sounded like some donkey politician. “Listen, everybody. We’re in a river of shit here. But can do things, us, to help ourselves!”
“Like what?” somebody said, but it wasn’t nasty. He really wanted to know. I tried to see, me, who it was, but the crowd was too packed in.
“The food’s gone,” Jack said. “The gravrail don’t work. Nobody in Albany answers, them, on the official terminal. But we got us. It’s what — eight miles? — to Coganville. Maybe they got food, them. They’re on a spur of the gravrail franchise, plus they’re a state line, so they got two chances for trains to be running, them. Or maybe their congressman or supervisor or somebody arranged for food to come in by air, like ours, only it didn’t stop. They’re in a different congressional district. We don’t know, us. But we could walk there, some of us, and see. We could get help.”
“Eight miles over mountains in winter?” Celie Kane yelled. “You’re as crazy as I always thought, Jack Sawicki! We got a crazy man, us, for a mayor!”
But nobody yelled along with Celie. I stepped up onto a chair, me, along the back wall, just to see this more clearly. The feeling you get after a Lucid Dreamer concert still filled them. Or maybe not. Maybe the concert had got down inside them, from watching it so much. Anyway, they weren’t raging, them, about the donkey politicians that got them into this mess, except for Celie and a few like her. There’s always them people. But most of the faces I could see, me, looked thoughtful, and people talked in low voices. Something moved inside my belly that I didn’t never know was there.
“I’ll go, me,” Jack said. “We can follow the gravrail line.”
“It’ll be drifted in bad,” Paulie Cenverno said. “No trains for two weeks to blast the snow loose.”
“Take a Y-unit,” a woman’s voice said suddenly. “Turn it on high, it, and melt what you can!”
“I’ll go, me,” Jim Swikehardt said.
“If you make a travois, you,” Krystal Mandor called, “you can bring back more food.”
“If they got food, them, we could set up a regular schedule—”
People started to argue, them, but not to fight. Ten men walked up near Jack, plus Judy Farrell, who’s six foot high, her, and can beat Jack arm-wrestling.
I climbed down off my chair, me. One knee creaked. I shoved my way through the crowd and stood next to Jack. “Me, too, Jack. I’m going.”
Somebody laughed, hard and nasty. It wasn’t Celie. But then they stopped, all at once.
“Billy…”Jack said, his voice kind. But I didn’t let him finish. I spoke real low and fast, me, so nobody could hear but Jack and, standing next to him, Ben Radisson.
“You going to stop me, Jack? If you men go, you going to stop me from walking along behind you? You going to knock me down, you, so’s I can’t follow? Lizzie’s hungry. Annie don’t have nobody else but me. If there ain’t enough food brought back from Coganville, you telling me Lizzie and Annie, them, are going to get a fair share? With Dr. Turner staying with us?”
Jack didn’t say nothing. Ben Radisson nodded, him, real slow, looking right at me. He’s a good man. That’s why I let him hear.
The rabbit meat squished against my chest, inside my coat. Nobody could smell it. Nobody could see the bulge, them, because it was after all just a small piece of meat, a measly rabbit, pathetic as dirt. Lizzie was hungry. Annie was a big woman. I was going, me, to Coganville.
But I wasn’t going to tell Annie. She’d kill me, her, before I even got the chance to save her.
We started out, us, at first light, twelve people. More might scare the people of Coganville. We didn’t want, us, what they needed for themselves. Just the extra.
No, that ain’t true. We wanted, us, whatever we needed.
I got up from the sofa too quiet to wake Annie or Lizzie in the bedrooms. But Dr. Turner, on her pile of blankets in the corner, she heard me, damn her. A man can’t never .have no privacy from donkeys.
“What is it, Billy? Where are you going?” she whispered.
“Not to no Eden,” I said. “Lay back down, damn it, and leave me alone.”
“They’re going to another town for food, aren’t they?”
I remembered, me, that she’d said last night she was going down to the cafe. But I didn’t see her there, me. But they know things, donkeys. Somehow. You never know how much they know.
“Listen, Billy,” she said, real careful, but then she stopped like she didn’t know what I should listen to. I pulled on three pairs of socks before she got it.
“There’s a novel, written a long time ago—”
“A what?” I said, and then cursed myself, me. I shouldn’t never ask her nothing, me. She can out-talk me every time.
“A story. About a small worldful of people who believed in sharing everything in common. Until a famine struck, and people on a broken train needed food from the nearby town. The passengers hadn’t eaten in two days. But the townspeople didn’t have much food themselves, and what they did have they wouldn’t share.” The whisper in the dark room was flat, her.
I couldn’t help asking, me. I like stories. “What happened to the people on the gravrail?”
“The gravrail got fixed in the nick of time.”
“Lucky them,” I said. Wasn’t nobody going to fix our gravrail or cafe kitchen. Not this time. Dr. Turner knew that, her.
“It was a fairy tale, Billy. Brave and inspiring and sweet, but a fairy tale. You’re in a real United States. So take this with you.”
She didn’t say not to go, her. Instead she gave me a little black box that she pushed onto my belt and it stuck there. I got a funny flutter in my chest, me. I knew what it was, even though I never wore one before, me, and never expected to. It was a personal energy shield.
“Touch it here” Dr. Turner said, “to activate. And the same place to deactivate. It’ll withstand damn near any attack that isn’t nuclear.”
Turned on, it didn’t feel like nothing. Just a little tingle, and that might have been my imagination. But I could see a faint shimmer around me.
“But, Billy, don’t lose it,” Dr. Turner said. “I need it. I might need it badly.”
“Then why you giving it to me, you?” I flashed at her, but I already knew, me. It was because of Lizzie. Everything was because of Lizzie. Just like it should be.
Anyway, Dr. Turner probably had another one, her. Donkeys don’t give away nothing unless they already got another one for themselves.