“Fine, Brittany, thanks for telling me.” He reached and touched a shoulder, felt the sharp-edged bone through her poncho. He walked on.
“Get your head on straight, Frost” she yelled after him in her voice of a nine-year-old. “There’s drug addicts and all kinds of weirdoes.”
A drop of rain touched his face. King had gone off. He looked back at the domicile. Jessica and Night and Salmon were rising from the steps where they had been seated. He heard from their direction a ripple of female laughter.
He passed the tall and skeletal ruin of an industrial plant. The rusted hoppers and chutes were still mostly intact. Here the ground was gravel and hard, grown over with broom, blackberry and horsetail that the winter could not kill. Farther on he saw Amber’s barge. She was in her garden, working with Deas and Will. On the dark earth there were three piles of carrots, as bright as fire.
He heard the voices of children and headed down to the water again. Arthurlaing and Cloud and Rain’s two girls were chucking rocks at something in the water, close to the shore. They all quit throwing at the same time and started searching the ground frantically. Frost stopped a short distance from them.
“I got somethin’!” yelled one of Rain’s girls. She had a length of rotting weed with a few limp leaves.
Skytrain was sitting on the ground. His bare legs and feet stuck straight out of his woollen shift. They were streaked with mud. He was banging the ground with a plastic bottle. He threw his head back and shouted “Got sumpin’! Got sumpin’!” His fine blond hair was wet from the drizzle. A cord of snot sat on his upper lip.
Rain’s girl cocked her hand back over her shoulder and threw the weed. It landed in the water two feet out. The children yelled and blasted it with rocks and handfuls of dirt and then started furiously searching again. Skytrain yelled too and pounded the ground harder. Arthurlaing came over to him and leaned close and spoke to him gently. Skytrain stopped pounding. Arthurlaing pointed to the river and continued speaking. He put his hand on Skytrain’s shoulder. The three girls were watching.
Frost heard “Okay?”
Arthurlaing helped Skytrain get up. Skytrain ran in a sort of fast stumble to the water’s edge. He cocked his hand as Rain’s girl had and threw the bottle. It bounced off his bare foot. Skytrain snatched up the bottle and tossed it out about ten feet. The children found rocks or grabbed some mud. They threw whatever they had, yelling and screaming. Soon they were silent as they watched the bottle bob and slide away on the current. Then Skytrain shrieked “Bottle! Bottle!” and turned and threw himself face down on the ground, bawling and kicking his feet.
Frost watched the bottle pick up speed. By the time he had taken a half-dozen breaths it was out of sight. He said “Has anybody seen Grace?”
Arthurlaing and Cloud and Rain’s girls whirled around, surprised and afraid. Skytrain stopped wailing and scrambled to his feet. They gaped at Frost. None of them spoke. Frost said “Arthurlaing, you keep Skytrain back from the water. It’s dangerous. Can you do that?”
Arthurlaing nodded and said “’Kay, Frost.”
“So what is it you’re going to do?”
“I’m going to keep him back from the water.”
Frost nodded and left them. As he passed Amber’s garden Will looked up and hollered “Hi Grampa!” Deas waved, but Amber was occupied with a particular carrot and only gave him a glance. Frost waved but did not stop.
He walked until he came to Little Bridge. Fundy’s Bridge was close now. There was only one soldier up on top. He could not see Fundy’s end. He turned left toward Fallen Bridge.
Near the bed of cattails he stopped on a slight slope and stood staring down at the expanse of grey and twisted leaves. But it must have been something else that he was seeing, because behind his rain-spotted lenses his eyes did not appear to be focused on anything. He stood like that for three or four minutes, as the rain increased. He had no hat. When a rivulet rolled under his poncho and down his back he shivered and sighed and turned away and took a step. But there was a sudden rustling, and from out of the wall of dead leaves stepped old Brandon.
“Hello Frost, you bastard.”
In his bleached and torn poncho and kilt, with his white beard and white hair bent at clumped angles, he looked as if he were constructed of the cattails that had hidden him. His eyes, however, were like black marbles. He stood there with legs spread. In one hand he held a half-litre plastic bottle with some liquid. He jogged it a little, showing Frost.
Frost said “What the hell are you doing in there?”
Brandon barked his reply “Lookin’ for arrows. I’m a hell of a shot with my Robin Hood bow.” He unscrewed the top of the bottle, lifted the bottle to toast Frost, said “Up yours” took a swallow, and screwed the cap on again.
Frost said “Where are you getting your hooch from? I cut you off.”
Brandon waved his free hand in dismissal and half-turned to go back into the cattails. He said “You think you know what’s goin’ on on this farm? You think you know what’s goin’ on around here? Bah, you don’t know nothin’. You ain’t the only game in town.”
And then Frost was staring again at the wall of winter-dead leaves.
25
Tyrell alone occupied the middle of the roadway. The rest of the guards shuffled unsurely near the sidewalks. They looked embarrassed and confused, and glanced at Tyrell every second or two, as if they were waiting for instructions, which he did not give. He said to Noor “Where you off to?” He held loosely at his side a spear made of one-by-two. His sword was slipped through a belt of blue twine. He stood directly in Beauty’s path.
The leashed dogs were all prancing and wagging their tails, and some of them were yapping. Beauty veered to the left and touched noses with King, who was held by Will. Then she snorted and tossed her head.
Noor clucked and kicked with her heels, but Beauty was reluctant to move on. Noor did not look at Will.
Will seemed worried. He said “Where you goin’?”
Finally Noor got the horse to start up again. She said, still without looking at Will “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” Her eyes were hard. Her mouth was set.
Tyrell stayed in front of the horse, walking backwards. ‘Noor, are you crazy? You can’t go into Town on your own. Not with things the way they are.”
Noor clucked twice and flicked the reins, and Beauty picked up her pace a little. Tyrell stepped aside. He said “Take a dog at least. We can spare one.” Then he stepped farther aside, first to get out of the way of the spear that Noor held crossways in front of her, and then to get out of the way of the two-wheeled cart that Beauty was pulling. Noor in no way acknowledged him. “God damn it, Noor!” he called after her. Then he swore for a while. Then he said “Shit. Well, say hello to Robson for me.”
Behind Noor some of the dogs whined as she progressed down the bridge.
The cart was low and rode at a backward slant. It carried two big open black plastic bags stuffed with hay, three plastic buckets covered tightly with plastic and sitting in circles of slopped water, and a tied bag that revealed through a rip the mottled orange skin of a squash. A pair of leather sandals sat loose on the dirty and weathered bed of the cart, and a litre bottle of liquid had rolled back against a water bucket. There were no sides to the cart, but a back of spaced horizontal two-by-fours kept the load from sliding off.
When the bridge was behind her and she faced the long scrubby slope in which Town Trail was more or less hidden she let the reins droop, and Beauty picked her own way along the footpath that ran down the centre of the old road. The trail was clear enough. But the edges of the cart caught often on brush, and sometimes a wheel would jolt against a bulge or foot-wide crack or the elevated edge of a fracture. When this happened Noor would turn, and her eyes would slide from item to item, hay to squash to water to sandals to hooch.