Skeletons (39 page)

"Why?"

Mr. L looks at me as if surprised I asked the question. "Basically, Mr. Garber, though they professed allegiance to the government of the United States, they were trying to overthrow me. The man you knew as Antler, along with others at the Central Intelligence Agency, have been trying to undermine my authority for months. They arranged for a former president to try a coup, they tried to authorize the use of nuclear weapons without my authority, they've tried several other clumsy methods." He reaches into his pocket, shows me the penny with his own likeness burred off. "This was their crude form of humor, Mr. Garber. Needless to say, I've disbanded the CIA. Not that I can honestly see why it was ever needed in the first place."

I feel like cheering for this man.

He gives me a slight smile. "Oh, yes, Mr. Garber, I'm a pretty good politician at heart. In my original time I had to deal with the likes of Salmon Chase and Stephen Douglas. A snake is still a snake, Mr. Garber, and you've got to keep a stick handy.

"Now, Mr. Garber, this is what I'd like you to do . . ." We jazz for a while, Mr. L and me. He tells me what he wants, tells me about some dreams he's been having, weird ones about a human black girl who will be the last woman in the whole fucking world. It sounds real weird to me, but I can't afford to be impolite. I tell him I can do it, grade-A
okey-dokey
, no
problemo
. For a guy without a CIA, this dude knows plenty. Then he shakes my hand again, and he's got real control, because this time I see no hint of that "kill you,
sucka
" look in his eyes. Only a bit of faint amusement, because we both know he can trust me about as far as you can spread your toes. But that's okay. We're both horse traders. I like this
prez
. And we both understand that if I don't do what he says, I get turned in a finger snap and find myself warming a bench next to Bobbie
Zick
in the fed pen.

He's okay, the L Man.

And then the damnedest thing happens. I'm coming out of the meeting with Mr. L, just sauntering along, and I come to this spot at the top of the staircase outside the O Office where it seems some damage has been done. So I step near the scaffolding to take a look.

Only there isn't any scaffolding, and there isn't any step there, and suddenly I'm hanging by my fingers from the top of a marble hole, looking down at a long drop to hard floor far below. Then my fingers are slipping. I see myself as red squish, then rising again as a
skel
.

Only now it don't seem so bad. I can actually see myself getting along in this bone world, especially with guys like Mr. L running the show.

So I don't even mind that my fingers are slipping—in fact, I'm kind of helping them along, raising them one by one and thinking about the new and wonderful life to come.

"Geronimo!" I'm starting to say.

Two fingers to go, and I'm letting them slip

Only then Mr. L is there, looming above me like the tall mast of a ship. He's grabbing my fingers and then my hands, and hauling me up like I'm a log about to slip the wrong way downstream. And he's strong.

"We can't have that, Mr. Garber," he says in an almost scolding tone. "That reminds me of the farmer with the nearsighted chicken who couldn't find the feed. All the other chickens got fat and ended up on the farmer's dinner table. Then one day this skinny runt of a nearsighted chicken comes clucking into the kitchen and hops in the frying pan.

"But the farmer takes one look at it, plucks it out, and says, 'I think you're more use to me the way you are!' "

Margaret Gray said, "Rise."

I rose from my sleeping mat in Margaret Gray's tent and walked out to see two hundred others rising from their rough beds on the ground.

"Work!" Margaret Gray shouted. "As the Lord commands you, work!"

And so another day began.

We were somewhere in western Iowa, near the Nebraska border. This day, like the other days of the last weeks, we spent in the midst of dried, stripped stalks of corn, gathering missed ears for our meal. We fought skeleton crows to get at some of them. I and the rest had taken to hitting the crows with a long hard stick, watching them burst to dust.

Each ear produced a few kernels of feed corn, and by dinnertime, after the hot sun had slid across the sky like an iron, there was barely enough to make a thick corn gruel, which barely fed everyone.

At dinner, as always, I counted heads. Yesterday there were two hundred and five. But today there was a birth, and two deaths from exhaustion. So the figure should be two hundred and four.

We gather humans as we go. Without the murders we would have doubled our number by now. But if Margaret Gray does not get allegiance, and quickly, the newcomers do not live. The double executions have become standard, and expected, as have the spies, and Margaret's squads of police. When even the police became too zealous, they, too, are subject to Margaret's whims and likely to die.

Four times I have tried to escape, once when we were still in Pennsylvania, making it as far as thirty miles away, stowed in the back of an unknowing Amish skeleton's wagon. For two days I felt the taste of freedom, until Margaret herself found me with a bodyguard of ten. The Amish farmer was turned to dust, begging for his second life on his knees. Margaret administered the gunshot herself. I was taken back in chains.

The chains stayed on me for three days, until I was allowed to go back to work with the others.

Mostly I am shunned, and work alone. Those who try to get close to me have learned that sooner or later it is not a good idea. Margaret Gray comes to think that conspiracy is in the air. Execution cannot be far behind.

"The child belongs to God," she has said of me, and since she thinks of herself as the agent of God, what she means, in effect, is that I belong to her.

I think of my mother all the time. I feel so lonely I want to cry. Yet at the same time I feel that something special is happening to me, just as my mother said it would. Inside, I feel as if I'm opening like a flower.

Margaret Gray hates me, but is also afraid of me. I have become the center of her religious madness. In one sense she reveres me. But this does not exclude me from abuse or from work. Margaret herself has said that no harm will come to me, yet she has not refrained from beating me publicly. There is a rage in her eyes that never dies, and sometimes she looks on me with a kind of hatred that frightens me horribly. But always she holds herself in check, pronounces me "chosen," and no great harm comes to me.

"No matter what, you will be preserved," she says, though I sense she hates saying the words.

In Pennsylvania we started with twenty, and our numbers grew as we progressed. It was as if whatever humans crossed our path naturally gravitated toward us. Margaret did not have to root them out; as we passed through a seemingly abandoned, burning town, the legacy of General Lee's march west, a cellar door would creak open, or a hidden trapdoor would rise, and one or two emaciated human beings would crawl out and join our number. Some proclaimed us their salvation. Many were mad already, ripe for Margaret's teachings and rule.

Those that resisted were executed.

There is no doubt that what Margaret has done is brilliant. She is never without a radio. In each town we first scour for radios and batteries. She then listens with rabid concentration to the local and national news stations, all run by skeletons now, which have unwittingly told us how to proceed. Soon the pattern of the government's campaign became clear. All across the country humans were being choked off and driven south and north toward the center line from New York to California. From the east Lee was plowing westward as the remnants were forced toward his massive army. So Margaret merely held us back, followed well behind Lee, picking up the stragglers, keeping Lee's huge force two hundred miles in front of us.

It worked. We encountered little resistance and avoided those towns that had been quickly resettled with skeletons. We traveled by bus and other transport when possible, abandoning our vehicles when they were spotted and hiding in the hills, scattering and then re-grouping again when the crisis was over. Always the radio kept us informed of our own progress.

And slowly our numbers grew.

Although—when I finished counting heads tonight, I came up with only two hundred and two.

I learned later that a man and woman tried to escape earlier in the day, were hunted down and double-executed.

That night Margaret Gray commanded me to lie on my sleeping pallet in her tent, as she lay rigidly on her cot.

"Sleep," she commanded.

When we crossed into Nebraska two days later, Margaret decided that since the last day of summer was near and the harvest moon coming, there would be a celebration.

"For the glory of God," she said.

This was like a release. All of the tension of the last weeks, the constant pressure and fear, was channeled into this event. We were still in corn country, so a harvest feast was planned. Costumes were made for the children from dried corn stalks. The women wore dried cornflowers in their hair. Harvest moon was two days away.

The radio, as if in agreement with our wishes, informed us that there were no troops within two hundred and fifty miles. Ahead of us Lee was pressing westward with rapid speed. The nearest town was forty miles away. We had the sky and hills and corn-filled valleys to ourselves.

The day before the harvest moon we found a haven of sorts. Over a rise we found ourselves confronted with unpicked corn as far as the eye could see.

"A deliverance, from God," Margaret said, raising her hand in blessing.

The fields were ripe. We had never eaten this well. That day the harvest was a happy one, with songs sung and the mounting pile of corn a blessing in the warm sun. Even the skeletal crows were absent. Late in the day we saw the majestic sight of a real hawk circling high overhead.

When the moon rose fat the following night, all was ready. Margaret had decreed that a bonfire could be built. There was dancing, and songs. Then the eating began: corn bread and corn biscuits and corn soup, a bounty of everything. I heard more than one "praise God" and "amen." The little children ran around the bonfire, throwing sticks into it and watching them pop.

As the moon climbed above us Margaret called us to sit. She stood before the fire, with me next to her. Her hand holding my arm dug into me like a claw. All day I had sensed some inner battle taking place within her.

The moon haloed our backs. Crackling sparks shot into the air.

When Margaret finally spoke, it was as if she were tearing the words reluctantly from her soul.

"I can tell you now, my children," she said, her fingers tightening painfully on my arm, "that we are heading toward paradise."

Someone in the back shouted, "Amen!"

"We are heading for paradise, but I tell you that only one of us will see it. For God has commanded that the world be cleansed, and washed clean, so that paradise can come again!"

Again: "Amen!"

"This child," she said, nearly sobbing, pushing me forward for them all to see, "will be the one!" Silence descended.

Margaret brought herself under control and shouted, "Though we may fall by the wayside, we will fall by God's grace, because the Lord has allowed us to share in His miracle. And this girl is His miracle! Though she does not speak, her life speaks in a multitude of tongues. Though we may look upon her, and see but a girl, she is a woman in God's eyes. And He has put her here to lead us all to His light."

"Amen!" And another: "Amen!"

"Hear me!" Margaret Gray said. "For I have had a vision from the God of all! And He had said this girl is our salvation!"

"Amen! Amen!"

"I have had the vision, too!" someone shouted. "Yes, the dream!"

"Amen!"

"We will head west," Margaret said, "and then we will head north! All who oppose us will be crushed! For we have God as our protector! And God in my vision has shown me paradise." She looked at me, wildness in her eyes, and smiled madly. "And this," she said quietly, "is where the child must go."

"Hallelujah!"

Suddenly I was surrounded by wild faces—faces filled with faith. I was lifted on shoulders and danced around the bonfire. Margaret watched, smoldering with barely concealed rage, but allowed this to go on. Amid shouts of "amen!" and "God be praised!" I was carried aloft, held up.

When I was finally able to, I went off to sit out of the glare of the fire. The celebration went on for most of the night. There was liquor produced, which someone had made from corn. Remarkably, Margaret didn't stop its distribution.

Alone, I thought of my mother, and tears came into my eyes.

Not wanting to watch anymore, I went off and lay on my sleeping pallet. I could not sleep. Outside, the sounds of the revelers had become, if anything, louder. Through the half-open flat of the tent I saw the moon falling slowly toward the western horizon.

The tent flap opened. Margaret Gray stood there, outlined in dark light, tall, fierce, rigid.