“She was making this sculpture,” the whiny voice explained; “this big sculpture. Of a lion. Out of junk metal and stuff. It was beautiful…! But she had to leave it.”
“Wow,” he said. “Is it like that?”
One short, hard laugh: “Yeah. We got it real easy.”
“Tell him about Calkins? Or the scorpions?”
“He’ll learn about them.” Another laugh. “What can you say?”
“You want a weapon to take in with you?”
That made him afraid again. “Do I need one?”
But they were talking among themselves:
“You’re gonna give him that?”
“Yeah, why not? I don’t want it with me anymore.”
“Well, okay. It’s yours.”
Metal sounded on chain, while one asked: “Where you from?” The flashlights turned away, ghosting the group. One in profile near the rail was momentarily lighted enough to see she was very young, very black, and very pregnant.
“Up from the south.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from the south,” one said who did.
“I’m not from the south. But I was just in Mexico.”
“Oh, hey!” That was the pregnant one. “Where were you? I know Mexico.”
The exchange of half a dozen towns ended in disappointed silence.
“Here’s your weapon.”
Flashlights followed the flicker in the air, the clatter on the gridded blacktop.
With the beams on the ground (and not in his eyes), he could make out half a dozen women on the catwalk.
“What—” A car motor thrummed at the end of the bridge; but there were no headlights when he glanced. The sound died on some turnoff—“is it?”
“What’d they call it?”
“An orchid.”
“Yeah, that’s what it is.”
He walked over, squatted in the triple beam.
“You wear it around your wrist. With the blades sticking out front. Like a bracelet.”
From an adjustable metal wrist-band, seven blades, from eight to twelve inches, curved sharply forward. There was a chain-and-leather harness inside to hold it steady on the fingers. The blades were sharpened along the outside.
He picked it up.
“Put it on.”
“Are you right or left handed?”
“Ambidextrous…” which, in his case, meant clumsy with both. He turned the “flower.” “But I write with my left. Usually.”
“Oh.”
He fitted it around his wrist, snapped it. “Suppose you were wearing this on a crowded bus. You could hurt somebody,” and felt the witticism fail. He made a fist within the blades, opened it slowly and, behind curved steel, rubbed two blunt and horny crowns on the underside of his great thumb.
“There aren’t too many buses in Bellona.”
Thinking: Dangerous, bright petals bent about some knobbed, half-rotted root. “Ugly thing,” he told it, not them. “Hope I don’t need you.”
“Hope you don’t either,” one said above. “I guess you can give it to somebody else when you leave.”
“Yeah.” He stood up. “Sure.”
“If he leaves,” another said, gave another laugh.
“Hey, we better get going.”
“I heard a car. We’re probably gonna have to wait long enough anyway. We might as well start.”
South: “He didn’t make it sound like we were gonna get any rides.”
“Let’s just get going. Hey, so long!”
“So long.” Their beams swept by. “And thanks.” Artichokes? But he could not remember where the word had come from to ring so brightly.
He raised the orchid after them.
Caged in blades, his gnarled hand was silhouetted with river glitter stretching between the bridge struts. Watching them go, he felt the vaguest flutter of desire. Only one of their flashlights was on. Then one of them blocked that. They were footsteps on metal plates; some laughter drifting back; rustlings…
He walked again, holding his hand from his side.
This parched evening seasons the night with remembrances of rain. Very few suspect the existence of this city. It is as if not only the media but the laws of perspective themselves have redesigned knowledge and perception to pass it by. Rumor says there is practically no power here. Neither television cameras nor on-the-spot broadcasts function: that such a catastrophe as this should be opaque, and therefore dull, to the electric nation! It is a city of inner discordances and retinal distortions.
3
Beyond the bridge-mouth, pavement shattered.
One live street lamp lit five dead ones—two with broken globes. Climbing a ten-foot, tilted, asphalt slab that jerked once under him, rumbling like a live thing, he saw pebbles roll off the edge, heard them clink on fugitive plumbing, then splash somewhere in darkness…He recalled the cave and vaulted to a more solid stretch, whose cracks were mortared with nubby grass.
No lights in any near buildings; but down those waterfront streets, beyond the veils of smoke—was that fire? Already used to the smell, he had to breathe deeply to notice it. The sky was all haze. Buildings jabbed up into it and disappeared.
Light?
At the mouth of a four-foot alley, he spent ten minutes exploring—just because the lamp worked. Across the street he could make out concrete steps, a loading porch under an awning, doors. A truck had overturned at the block’s end. Nearer, three cars, windows rimmed with smashed glass, squatted on skewed hubs, like frogs gone marvelously blind.
His bare foot was calloused enough for gravel and glass. But ash kept working between his foot and his remaining sandal to grind like finest sand, work its way under, and silt itself with his sweat. His heel was almost sore.
By the gate at the alley’s end, he found a pile of empty cans, a stack of newspaper still wire-bound, bricks set up as a fireplace with an arrangement of pipes over it. Beside it was an army messpan, insides caked with dead mold. Something by his moving foot crinkled.
He reached down. One of the orchid’s petals snagged; he picked up a package of—bread? The wrapper was twisted closed. Back under the street lamp, he balanced it on his fingers, through the blades, and opened the cellophane.
He had wondered about food.
He had wondered about sleep.
But he knew the paralysis of wonder.
The first slice had a tenpenny nailhead of muzzy green in the corner; the second and third, the same. The nail, he thought, was through the loaf. The top slice was dry on one side. Nothing else was wrong—except the green vein; and it was only that penicillium stuff. He could eat around it.
I’m not hungry.
He replaced the slices, folded the cellophane, carried it back, and wedged it behind the stacked papers.
As he returned to the lamp, a can clattered from his sandal, defining the silence. He wandered away through it, gazing up for some hint of the hazed-out moon—
Breaking glass brought his eyes to street level.
He was afraid, and he was curious; but fear had been so constant, it was a dull and lazy emotion, now; the curiosity was alive:
He sprinted to the nearest wall, moved along it rehearsing his apprehensions of all terrible that might happen. He passed a doorway, noted it for ducking, and kept on to the corner. Voices now. And more glass.
He peered around the building edge.
Three people vaulted from a shattered display window to join two waiting. Barking, a dog followed them to the sidewalk. One man wanted to climb back in; did. Two others took off down the block.
The dog circled, loped his way—
He pulled back, free hand grinding the brick.
The dog, crouched and dancing ten feet off, barked, barked, barked again.
Dim light slathered canine tongue and teeth. Its eyes (he swallowed, hard) were glistening red, without white or pupil, smooth as crimson glass.