That’s okay.
I mean for real. We have a long flat stretch here and I think you can do it.
Okay.
He pulled over and they quickly switched, Fan moving the seat all the way up so she could reach the pedals. She put it into gear and started too slowly and then jerked them forward, but once they were under way, her driving was smooth and assured. Quig picked up his handscreen and restarted the viola piece, the music filling the vehicle.
This is a nice song, she said.
Yes, it is.
After a while, he tapped at his handscreen a few times and he held out a picture for her to see: it was Trish, standing with her mother post recital, the gleaming viola at her side.
You want to know about them? he said. I’ll tell you what happened. Do you want to hear it?
She wasn’t certain anymore if she did. But he was going to tell her anyway. And so she said yes.
11
And so Fan, driving, listened to the tale of those first days for Quig and his family. Despite the awful details, his telling must have helped her relax at the wheel, the way music can allow our instincts to take over the countless mechanical operations that you couldn’t possibly orchestrate if you had to think through each one. Perhaps it’s the same for a storyteller, the sound of one’s own voice caretaking this turn and the next, and allowing the full flow.
Like everybody, Quig told her, they had read about banishments and would not hear again about those people, and so the day they drove away from their village, Glynnis was terrified, feeling certain that it was their death sentence. She couldn’t stop weeping, these squalls welling up from her chest. Quig was scared, too, though he tried his best not to show it. What helped was that he was preoccupied, though of all the things he should have been worrying about or focusing on, such as where they would spend that first night, or how they would defend themselves if confronted (like all Charters, they couldn’t legally own any weapons), he simply couldn’t settle on whether he should be driving slow or fast, which speed would attract less attention and thus be safest. So he kept alternating, slowing down and then accelerating for arbitrary stretches, until Glynnis finally begged him to stop driving that way. This broke the looped chain of his thoughts, and soon enough he realized that it was probably best to proceed smoothly and purposefully, as if they were heading someplace specific. But when you consider it, one comes to understand how the question might have gripped him. For what do you do when you truly have no idea where you’re heading? At least a pet could revert to its instinct to hide and forage and defend itself and even kill, but what of a former Charter family with meager funds and mostly useless trading possessions (a toaster oven, a cocktail dress) and just a tankful of fuel? Of course, there was no possibility of being accepted into a production settlement like B-Mor (which is always restricted) or trying to gain residency at another Charter, as their banishment was in force system wide. Imagine yourself at the helm of a ship slingshot beyond the Earth’s pull, one course into the spectral chasm as likely as any other, all coordinates open but potentially full of peril, each completely unknown.
He couldn’t help but think, too, that in her own way Trish was tilting with the same dreadful notions. She was totally quiet, which wasn’t like her, not making a sound from the backseat and barely grunting when he asked if she was hungry or had to go; aside from his own fear, his heart was breaking with the inescapable fact that her future was null and that her parents were the sole cause. He had considered suicide but he was sick with the idea of where that would leave his family, which in turn made him think of simply driving off the road at the next drop-off or ravine, delivering them together to a swift, merciful end. But that would be the coward’s path, and he was already angry at himself for the too easy slide he and Glynnis made into their illicit trade, when he should have been putting all his energies into retooling himself, and recalibrating his aspirations, even if it meant descending into the Charter’s service class and perhaps not rising for years, if ever. He should have allowed the linens business more time to grow; he should have been harsher with Glynnis when he first discovered the selling and demanded she cease, but he didn’t blame her, for he knew it was squarely his fault; he should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which had him dreaming more than doing. While his vet partners and Glynnis had been the entrepreneurial ones, he would have been content to welcome the pets and animals into his single office one by one, administering medications and performing surgeries and even brushing their teeth and clipping their nails if needed.
But now here he was, at the wheel of his family car, trekking into the open counties. There were some motels up ahead where you could also get a meal, but they were known at best to be grubby, dingy establishments, and very expensive, being relatively secure, certainly not affordable for more than a few days for any non-Charter. Naturally Charters would never stay there; they traveled by private copter or plane, or on upper-atmosphere globals if they went overseas, and would rarely take a car ride of more than a couple of hours.
Quig passed on the first two motels, one being full and the other so decrepit that it appeared it might imminently collapse, but there was nothing on the nav for a half day’s drive past the third one and he was compelled to stop. The large sign at the place read Who Falls Inn, as it was set beside a stream that ran, if meagerly, over a poured concrete dam, which was what made up the “falls.” What purpose the dam served, either past or present, was not apparent. There were a good number of other cars parked in the fenced-in lot and the two-level building was an aqua blue with roiling cascades of white water painted on the roof and on the walls under the eaves, well rendered in a certain way, if looking more like surf than gushing water. The place was tidy and well cared for, the plantings of flowers and shrubs around the building healthy and attractive, the footpath through the grass that unnecessarily snaked toward the front entrance lined with clean white stones and trimmed out with lengths of red garden hose, such that all in all the impression was of an establishment one might encounter in a folk tale, this colorful, friendly-looking hostelry in the middle of a nether land, which surely could not be as inviting as it seemed.
Which was why Quig and Glynnis had to warn Trish that they might not be staying there, their immediate shared thought being this was too good to be true. They waved to the vid cam and got buzzed in through the rolling section of fence gating. Quig composed himself by taking a series of long, deep breaths — he was not the man he’d soon have to become — and walked to the office window. He tapped on the three-fingers-thick plexiglass and a shade went up, revealing a bespectacled fellow, youngish but already bald, his Afro tightly sheared on the sides and meeting his neatly groomed beard and moustache. He wore a crisply pressed white dress shirt with a diamond-shaped monogram (LWA) stitched into the breast pocket of the shirt. When he saw Quig, who back then was wide-eyed and pale-skinned and looking very newly out of his element, the fellow’s expression hardened, no doubt anticipating the lengthy, pathetic sob story he’d endure and have to ignore once again. But Quig simply asked if there was a vacancy and if his car would be safe overnight, and the fellow — his name, they would soon learn, was Landon Wiggins Anderson — grumpily gestured that he should go retrieve his wife and daughter, and then he had them step through the metal detector.
Landon co-owned the inn with his partner, Dale, a short, tubby, florid-faced older white man who ushered them inside with a butterfly fluttering of hands and comments on how darling Trish looked in her polka-dot sundress and white patent-leather shoes and purse, an ensemble Glynnis had bought on their last day as Charter residents. It was something they could ill afford but Quig was actually happy she had splurged this one last time. Trish hadn’t said much at all about her new outfit but she was now showing off her new clutch to Dale, who disappeared and then returned with a box of costume jewelry pieces guests had left behind, and he said she could choose from and take as many items as she liked. Trish was a good girl so only chose a ring and a necklace, and it was only after Dale goaded her that she selected a ruby-crusted hairpin and a cowrie-shell bracelet.