Fire called “She said it was you kilt her. She said I better move in with the Ghost Crew before it’s too late. She said listen to the spuds.”
They walked on.
She called to their backs “Will, you shot up like a weed. When you going to visit me? I got somethin’ to show you. Lookit, Will, look what I got to show you.”
“Don’t turn, Will.”
“I know. She’s always tryin’ to show it to me.”
Daniel Charlie was talking to the field boss, Deas, who was sitting on the seat of the big wagon behind Beauty. Frost stopped a good distance away and pulled Will toward him and hugged him briefly and kissed him on the head, and Will went off to work with the others beyond the wagon. Deas got off the wagon and walked along beside Will with a hand on his shoulder.
Daniel Charlie came over to Frost. He was tall, almost as tall as Frost, and his hair was as white. He had a wispy white moustache but was otherwise beardless. He was darker skinned than Frost and wore his hair in a braid. He had an eagle feather tied into it, but almost all the barbs had worn away so that only a triangle remained at the end.
Frost said “When you going to get a new feather?”
“As soon as the eagles come back.”
“That may be a while. You better pluck a tail feather from one of the chickens.”
“You grow a chicken big enough and I just might do that.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, I’ve got a job for you.”
“If I can stop pickin’ spuds, I’m your man. What is it, the waterwheel? We won’t need to water the fields till next summer.”
“No, it’s something else. Do you think you could make some bows?”
“Bows? Like that?” He nodded down at Frost’s dusty shoes. “You want me to tie your new shoes for you? What, you getting’ too old to bend down?” Daniel Charlie laughed.
Frost stood there nodding for a few seconds, appearing to wait for a comeback that never came. “Different kind of bow” he said.
“Tyrell’s been talkin’ to you.”
“Can you?”
“Bows with an s. As in more than one. Damn it, Frost, I never thought it would come to this.”
Frost sighed. “I know. Me neither. It may not come to anything, Daniel. But skagger Langley’s been acting weird.”
“So I heard. Yes, I can make some bows.”
“You’ve got the right wood?”
“If the bows are going to have any kind of power they’ll have to be laminated. Two kinds of wood, one kind for the front and a different kind for the back. I’ve got some maple floorin’, and I’ve got some oak floorin’. I’ve got tons of fir.”
“Glue?”
“I made some a while back. If it hasn’t dried up. What do you plan to shoot in these bows? You’re not going to ask me to make the arrows too, are you? Because…”
“No, I’ve got an idea for the arrows. I’ll have them ready as soon as you’re done with the first bow.”
“Come on, I’ll show you my floorin’.”
“I doubt if I could stand the excitement. I think I’ll pick some spuds.”
8
Many years before, a young man sits in the backseat of a taxi in a traffic jam in Dubai. His dark curly hair grazes the roof. He wears a pressed short-sleeved blue shirt, a yellow tie with a picture of Karl Marx, and wire-rim glasses. Beside him on the seat lies a black canvas shoulder bag with the logo Mountain Equipment Co-op. The taxi has not moved for thirty minutes. The driver, who has a neat moustache and a white shirt and tie, turns and says something that the young man cannot hear because of the din of blaring car horns. The young man leans closer. The driver says “The time has come to take care of yourself, sir.”
“What? Sorry, what do you mean?”
“You must take care of yourself now, sir. I cannot take you any farther.”
“I have to walk?”
“Yes, I am sorry, sir.”
The young man reaches for his wallet.
The driver says “I am walking too. Could you help me? I am going to Pakistan.”
The young man falls back in his seat. He looks out the window. The sidewalk is as jammed as the street. People stand there looking anxious and confused, holding their hands above their eyes against the sun. Many talk into mobile phones. A blond European man in a cream-coloured linen suit, carrying a leather briefcase, walks past the young man’s cab. A few seconds later he passes in the other direction. Ten seconds after that he passes again, running, knocking people aside. The young man says to the driver “You are going to leave your taxi?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you are going to go home to Pakistan?”
“I am, sir.”
“Why?”
“There is no point in staying here. It is finished. There is no food in the stores. There is no petrol. That is why we have this traffic jam. Everybody is leaving. If I can’t get a plane I will get a boat. Can you help me, please?”
The young man looks out the window some more. Then he opens his wallet. He does not have air fare to Pakistan. But neither does he have enough to worry about keeping. He gives what he has to the driver, who says “Thank you, sir. You should go too. Can I ask, where is your home, sir?”
“Canada.”
“It is all finished. All finished.” The driver turns off the engine but leaves the keys in the ignition. He gets out of the taxi and heads down the street between the jammed cars. He makes better time than the people on the sidewalk.
The young man sits there for a minute, but it becomes unbearably hot with the air conditioning off. He sighs and takes his shoulder bag and gets out. The honking is a wall of sound so solid it seems to be an aspect of the day itself, like the smell of exhaust fumes carried on the hot wind, like the sky murky with dust, like the blasting heat. He loosens his tie and stands like many of the others, looking equally anxious, equally confused. Above the level of the car roofs in the street move the heads of hundreds of drivers or passengers who have now left their cars. The sidewalk is crammed with more and more people, Arabs, Indians, Philippinos, Europeans, some wanting to go one way, some wanting to go another, many seeming not to know what they want.
He looks around. Almost invisible in the hot grey sky, above office towers, he sees the pointed top of a building, monstrously tall, fading as it rises in the dust of the atmosphere. For a few seconds he stares at it and fingers his Karl Marx tie. The corners of his mouth turn down in sadness or anger or confusion. Nearby, well back from the road, beyond waving palms and colour-coordinated plantings he sees the half-completed sinews and curves of playful architecture. He sees building cranes, unmoving, sleeping like real cranes in the heat and dust. People are now pouring out the doors. A few workers are coming down off scaffolds. As far as he can see in either direction the many-laned road is crusted with stopped cars. He sees gusts of sand sliding between the cars and the sidewalk, piling up against wheels and against the curb. He wipes blown grit from his eye. He takes his mobile from his bag and calls a number.
“Susan? What? I can’t hear you. Sorry…what? Listen, I’m…” Someone crashes into him. He is pushed along. His phone is knocked from his hand.
The AC is still working in the school. The young man goes into the bathroom off the admin area and sets his shoulder bag and his glasses on the counter and washes his face with cold water and undoes his shirt and washes the sweat from his chest and neck and armpits with damp paper towels. He dries himself and puts on his glasses and does up his shirt and snugs up his Karl Marx tie and goes out.
Tony Walsh, one of the Science teachers, is screaming at Muna, the secretary. “I don’t care if the accountant’s not here! I want my pay and I want it now! Call the principal! Call her at home! Call her in Denver or wherever the hell she’s run away to! I’m leaving, don’t you get it? The school owes me money!”