This is, in fact, what had befallen certain open counties people. For it is known that a surprising number of them are former Charters. One might ask, Hey, why don’t they just come to the gates of a place like B-Mor? But it’s not as simple as that, and in practical terms, impossible. They can’t quite enter a B-Mor — like settlement because those are oversubscribed already, the row houses or residence halls occupied right up to the rooftops, our children assigned two to a desk at school. Plus, what could any newcomer among us possibly do to make a living? The jobs in the grow facilities and water and power plants are always filled and backed by apprentice attendants, who have been training since youth to step into the positions the moment they come open. The smattering of privately run businesses, like the one the Rivera-Dengs own, have been under family control for generations, and their leaseholds are rarely relinquished.
It’s ironic that ex-Charters should have to fall so far so quickly, that there’s no middle realm for them and their kin, pushed out as they are into the counties with little practical know-how or clue as to how to get by. It’s the reason why so few do get by, at least for very long, in particular those with solely Charter-specific skills, such as real estate speculators, or brokers of insurance or stocks, or the writer/creators of evening programs, one of whom was a compulsive gambler who squandered his considerable fortune. Needless to say, he did not last.
So when our dear Fan came to after the assault by Loreen, lying again in the cot with the splint redone, she couldn’t help but wonder about Quig. Like any of us, she knew the possibilities. Could he in fact be a former Charter nurse, or maybe even a doctor? Though as they say in the Charter villages, that would be quite an “outcome.” Doctors are among the most important and prestigious people around, especially for Charters, and thus often quite wealthy, too.
The messes were gone, her arms and legs and torso sponged mostly clean, the floor cleared except for a faint scrim of yellow paint. Loreen was of course gone, too, and though a panic that the mad woman might soon return sparked through Fan, she had a naturally reciprocal welling of what must be gratitude for Quig’s having halted the beating. She was surely wary of him, but the fact remained that he had already rescued her twice.
For the rest of the day Fan kept as still as she could. She tried to quell her hunger and thirst the same way she’d pushed back the need to breathe when she was underwater in the tanks, with the force of pure will, but applying it now like a balm to the jabs in her belly, the dry spots in her throat. She wanted not to need anything, at least as long as she could bear it. She couldn’t stand up, so she could not look out the little window set high in the wall, but she listened to numerous vehicles and people who came and went through the compound all day. One of the voices was Loreen’s, bossy and annoyed, rudely ordering people about; yet no one seemed to contest her. There were other voices and she listened for Quig’s; but none were his.
It was toward the end of the afternoon that someone approached the door, which immediately made Fan brace and sit up. When it opened, it was neither Loreen nor Quig but rather a pale, curly-haired boy of about thirteen or so, wearing a soiled T-shirt and dungarees and decrepit sneakers, and sipping from a drink box of strawberry-flavored soy milk. He had another drink box in his free hand and he offered it to Fan. She poked the straw through the foil hole and they drank without speaking. Fan surely couldn’t help but recall the breaks at the grow facility when she and Reg would buy a cup of tamarind juice from the refreshments cart and maybe slip away for a quick hug or even a peck or two before getting back to work. She drank the soy milk slowly in a long, steady draw. It was brackish and artificially flavored but still tasted as good as anything she could imagine. All the while the boy stared at her without a hint of self-consciousness. His sleepy, slightly up-angled eyes, like a goat’s, were the color of seawater beneath an overcast sky, and just as blank and murky.
Finally he said, You really from B-Mor?
Fan nodded. It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that she hadn’t uttered more than a few words since walking out from the gates. She had not meant to keep such a silence but here she was with a sensation of stitchedness upon her mouth and there was no reason to try to break it until she had to.
They say it’s nice there. Someday I’m going to see it.
She finished her drink and held it out, shaking it.
You want another?
She nodded again.
He skipped away and quickly returned, this time with two drink boxes in each hand. This easy bounty surprised her and made her worry for them both, in case he’d done wrong to retrieve them. But she drank two more anyway, one right after the other, while he asked her numerous questions about B-Mor that oddly enough could all be answered with a simple shake or nod of the head, which was perhaps an apt reflection of the workings of his mind but also his instinct telling him that that’s all he would get out of her. He asked, Did all the children go to school? Did everyone end up working in the “factories”? Did they ever run out of things to eat? Were the streets and parks as neat and clean as they say? Did people really live to old age? Yes, yes, no, yes, sort of; and then she gave replies to a score of other queries both childish and knowing. He was excited to talk to her and had turned over the large white toilet bucket that had been left for Fan as his own seat and would have gone on querying her indefinitely had Loreen’s voice not sawed through the air.
Sewey!
The boy rose slowly to his feet. I give out the numbers, he grumbled.
Sewey! You still in there?
Okay, Ma! he yelled.
Okay nothing! Get your ass out here! Now!
I’ll bring more drinks later, he said, a dull grin marking his face. Then he left her alone, locking her in once again.
For the few days Fan lived on flavored soy milk and graham crackers and peanut brittle and the odd piece of chicken jerky, Sewey was her sole sustained contact with the world. The injury was more minor than Quig had surmised, for her leg was only moderately painful and already seemed to be healing. She kept this fact to herself, an instinct for discretion overriding any fears she had for what might befall her, good leg or no. Quig came briefly to examine her leg and the splint, but he appeared both times in the middle of the night, his mini-flashlight rousing her from sleep, her heart bounding in a fitful dash; and before she could form any words, he’d have retightened the cord and checked the splint bindings and extinguished the light and left, depositing her back in her dreams. And what were those dreams? They were tableaus of the unknown, naturally, visions of anxiety and miserable solitude, the kind you might have when you are a child and clenched by high fever, when you see your loved ones from the bottom of a salt pit and they are as far off as the moon, when your arms are too heavy to lift, much less wave, and your voice has no carry. Fan’s dreams were all this but shot through as well with what surely were figments of a self-doubt characterized in her mind by the silhouette of our row houses set against a blood-orange haze of sky, the line of the roofs deviating by certain centimeters as they spanned the endless street, the segments discernibly shifting but never quite broken.
During those first visits from Sewey, Fan learned about life in the compound. She hardly had to ask any questions; Sewey was a born talker, the kind of talker you meet and have to nod at frequently and right off think about how to slip away from, but of course, Fan was going nowhere and Sewey had the companion he’d always longed for and no adults or older kids around to tell him to shut up. Fan was not just the quiet type but someone with a bountiful store of patience who didn’t mind following the endless branches of his thoughts as they reached skyward and backward and around the corner, toward whatever sun he alone felt the warmth of and could see. He brought another old bucket for a seat (she using hers to relieve herself, which he happily emptied and hosed out at day’s end), while she ate or drank or mostly just lay there and listened to Sewey talk while playing with something he called a yo-yo, a translucent orange plastic disc with a string wound about its split middle that he made go up and down, up and down, and sometimes would let spin in place, magically suspended a few centimeters above the floor, before flicking it back up.