The man jerked his hand free. He said “Don’t talk to me.”
Frost hesitated, said “Don’t you remember me? You can’t have forgotten. Does the skag do that?”
“Don’t talk to me. He won’t like it.”
Frost reached for the man’s hand again. “No, Steveston. You’re coming. I’ll protect you. I won’t let him hurt you.”
The man raised the hammer. “Can’t you see what I am?” he hissed. “I have to stay. Go away. Go away quick or he’ll kill me.”
Frost looked over his shoulder. King had backed Langley up against the rickshaw, but Langley was watching Frost and the man. Frost looked down at the pile of pods the woman had dumped. Then he pushed the man, who stumbled back against the stove. Some water slopped over the top of the two pots and hissed on the hot surface. The man spun to steady the pots. Frost bent and snatched three of the driest-looking pods. He backed away a few paces, then turned and walked with Tyrell up the path. In the A-frame the man squatted, took a pod, set it on the metal plate and hit it with the hammer. He turned his head to watch Frost walk away. Then he took another pod.
As Frost passed, Langley cried amid the dogs’ uproar “Give me them pods, god damn you. You god damn thief! You ain’t gettin’ no more skag off me.”
Tyrell took King’s leash. Marpole walked with Frost to the wagon. They climbed up, Marpole took the reins and they started up the driveway. When Frost’s wagon was on the trail Tyrell hushed the dogs, and he and his men and the dogs backed up the driveway to the other wagon as Langley screamed curses.
Marpole did not go back through the area of brush and asphalt but headed over Skaggers’ Bridge. For a while Frost stared at the slope of the erosion-scarred hill of Wesminister where it plunged down to the river, the few makeshift dwellings amid broom and blackberry vine, the deserted concrete towers further up the river. North of the river a line of burnt-off mountains receded to the east. Frost set the three poppy pods on the seat beside him, and placed his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands and did not look up for some time.
At the north end of the bridge they passed three guards with swords and spears. A half dozen filthy, thin, ragged or naked people waited their turn to barter. They had dirty plastic bags with the names of stores, a knob for a cupboard door, a few feet of electrical wiring. The guards let Frost’s wagons pass.
They unhitched the wagons and watered the animals at the river, then headed west along Marine Trail. Frost sat slumped, silent. After about ten miles they crossed over Wing’s Bridge and watered the animals again and turned west on the River Trail.
As his bridge drew close, Frost said “Don’t tell her.”
7
Frost and Will left the domicile. Frost said “Today’s the day it goes over.”
Will said “You always say that” and turned to look back and up at the tilting domicile.
“Hey, don’t look at it.”
“Why not?”
“That could be what does it.”
“Lookin’ at it? Could make it fall over?”
“The destructive effect of looking. Never heard of that? I knew your education was deficient.”
First they passed the piles of inventory, as Frost called it. Concrete building blocks stacked six high, ten across, ten deep. Ten or twelve such piles with corridors between them six feet wide. Near the last edge of the last pile, under plastic weighted with three of those blocks, lay one and a half bags of cement powder. Frost stopped and stared down at the bags and the weeds growing around the plastic and shook his head and sighed.
Will said “You sigh a lot. Noor says so too” and a while later, as they passed a stack of two-by-fours, which was more or less squared off and was under weighted plastic as well “Grampa, there’s no such thing. You can’t make somethin’ happen just by lookin’ at it.”
Frost extended his hand and the boy took it and they walked on. There was more lumber, sorted by size. There were coils of electrical wire. Pyramids of white plastic gas pipe a palm’s width in diameter, piles of copper plumbing gone green. There were fibreglass panels. There was vinyl siding. There was an exposed stack of asphalt shingles, the top layer growing a mane of dense moss.
It was cloudy and chilly and the ground was dry again.
A ways to the south, beyond the old highway, house foundations — some with rows of steel studs, a few with one or two whole walls — were ranged in a receding perspective. In some of the nearer rectangles workers were harvesting fall vegetables. “Welcome to the burbs” muttered Frost. And sighed. They walked past Daniel Charlie’s workshop, a small one-storey building with a wide crack on one wall that plunged among the concrete blocks in the shape of a dark lightning bolt. The building still had part of a sign with the word Collision.
The rapid transit bridge swooped southwest across the river and attached itself to Frost’s land like a pale and stubborn growth. Frost and Will stopped to pee against a pillar. “The destructive power of urine” said Frost.
Far ahead they heard a woman’s angry voice. Will stopped. Frost said “Fire won’t hurt you.”
“She shouts at me. She throws rocks at me.”
“She shouts at everyone. She throws rocks at everyone. What can I do, tell her to go away? She was here before you were born. Come on, we’ll make a wide circle.”
They walked into the farm’s fields, which were haphazard patches of delta soil among mounds of collapsed and overgrown buildings, among foundations of wooden structures gone decades before for firewood, among irrigation ditches dug willy-nilly. The fields ran up to a hay-stubble slope beside the old highway where it rose to meet Little Bridge, and continued south beyond the highway.
Frost and Will walked on the uneven dug-up earth, on the sparse carpet of dead leaves, through the widespread workers and the several wagons with their black and white steers. Everyone was out, the guards, the old folks, the few children, none of them near Will’s age.
Fire worked alone. No one within fifty yards. Her voice was shrill. “I know what you’re up to” she hollered. “You can’t fool me. The spuds tell me everythin’.” She bent and put a hand to her ear and cocked her head like a robin. “Oh, is that so?” she said loudly. “Evil plans, is it? Well, don’t worry, spuds, I got my own plans.”
Will would not turn in her direction. Frost called “Good morning, Fire.”
Fire was silent for a few seconds as she stood with her dirty hands on her hips, watching Frost and Will pass. She was a pretty woman, although many of her teeth were missing. She had reddish hair in loose tangled waves gone mostly to grey and wore a short rag dress. She picked up a potato and threw it, but it landed far short.
Frost spotted Daniel Charlie, and he and Will walked on toward him.
Fire started up again. “I know what you’re plannin’, Frost. The spuds tell me everythin’.”
Frost tried not to walk faster.
“Frost, Frost, I seen Zahra.”
Frost stopped. Will said “Never mind, Grampa. Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s just crazy.”
Fire called “She come to tell me what you’re up to. She come down the river on the midnight tide from the farm of the Ghost Crew.”
They moved on, and now it was Frost who would not look at Fire. Will picked up a stone and threw it at her.
“No, no, Will. She can’t help it. She sees things.”