The Best of Connie Willis (3 page)

Mom wouldn’t wait till her ankle was better. She bandaged it up and we went the very next day. She wouldn’t say a word the whole trip, just limped through the snow. She never even looked up till we got to the road. The snow had stopped for a little while and the clouds had lifted enough so you could see the Peak. It was really neat, like a black and white photograph, the gray sky and the black trees and the white mountain. The Peak was completely covered with snow. You couldn’t make out the toll road at all.

We were supposed to hike up the Peak with the Clearys.

When we got back to the house, I said, “The summer before last the Clearys never came.”

Mom took off her mittens and stood by the stove, pulling off chunks of frozen snow. “Of course they didn’t come, Lynn,” she said.

Snow from my coat was dripping onto the stove and sizzling. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “They were supposed to come the first week in June. Right after Rick graduated. So what happened? Did they just decide not to come or what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pulling off her hat and shaking her hair out. Her bangs were all wet.

“Maybe they wrote to tell you they’d changed their plans,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Maybe the post office lost the letter.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said.

“You’d think they’d have written or something,” I said.

“Maybe the post office put the letter in somebody else’s box,” Mrs. Talbot said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said, and went to hang her coat over the line in the kitchen. She wouldn’t say another word about them. When Dad got home I asked him about the Clearys, too, but he was too busy telling about the trip to pay any attention to me.

Stitch didn’t come. I whistled again and then started back after him. He was all the way at the bottom of the hill, his nose buried in something. “Come
on
,” I said, and he turned around and then I could see why he hadn’t come. He’d gotten himself tangled up in one of the electric wires that was down. He’d managed to get the cable wound around his legs like he does his leash sometimes and the harder he tried to get out, the more he got tangled up.

He was right in the middle of the road. I stood on the edge of the road, trying to figure out a way to get to him without leaving footprints. The road was pretty much frozen at the top of the hill, but down here snow was still melting and running across the road in big rivers. I put my toe out into the mud, and my sneaker sank in a good half inch, so I backed up, rubbed out the toe print with my hand, and wiped my hand on my jeans. I tried to think what to do. Dad is as paranoiac about footprints as Mom is about my hands, but he is even worse about my being out after dark. If I didn’t make it back in time he might even tell me I couldn’t go to the post office anymore.

Stitch was coming as close as he ever would to barking. He’d gotten the wire around his neck and was choking himself. “All right,” I said, “I’m coming.” I jumped out as far as I could into one of the rivers and then waded the rest of the way to Stitch, looking back a couple of times to make sure the water was washing away the footprints.

I unwound Stitch like you would a spool of thread, and threw the loose end of the wire over to the side of the road where it dangled from the pole, all ready to hang Stitch next time he comes along.

“You stupid dog,” I said. “Now hurry!” and I sprinted back to the side of the road and up the hill in my sopping wet sneakers. He ran about five steps and stopped to sniff at a tree. “Come on!” I said. “It’s getting dark. Dark!”

He was past me like a shot and halfway down the hill. Stitch is afraid of the dark. I know, there’s no such thing in dogs. But Stitch really is. Usually I tell him, “Paranoia is the number-one killer of dogs,” but right now I wanted him to hurry before my feet started to freeze. I started running, and we got to the bottom of the hill about the same time.

Stitch stopped at the driveway of the Talbots’ house. Our house wasn’t more than a few hundred feet from where I was standing, on the other side of the hill. Our house is down in kind of a well formed by hills on all sides. It’s so deep and hidden you’d never even know it’s there. You can’t even see the smoke from our woodstove over the top of the Talbots’ hill. There’s a shortcut through the Talbots’ property and down through the woods to our back door, but I don’t take it anymore. “Dark, Stitch,” I said sharply, and started running again. Stitch kept right at my heels.

The Peak was turning pink by the time I got to our driveway. Stitch peed on the spruce tree about a hundred times before I got it dragged back across the dirt driveway. It’s a real big tree. Last summer Dad and David chopped it down and then made it look like it had fallen across the road. It completely covers up where the driveway meets the road,
but the trunk is full of splinters, and I scraped my hand right in the same place as always. Great.

I made sure Stitch and I hadn’t left any marks on the road (except for the marks he always leaves—another dog could find us in a minute. That’s probably how Stitch showed up on our front porch, he smelled Rusty) and then got under cover of the hill as fast as I could. Stitch isn’t the only one who gets nervous after dark. And besides, my feet were starting to hurt. Stitch was really paranoiac tonight. He didn’t even take off running after we were in sight of the house.

David was outside, bringing in a load of wood. I could tell just by looking at it that they were all the wrong length. “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” he said. “Did you get the tomato seeds?”

“No,” I said. “I brought you something else, though. I brought everybody something.”

I went on in. Dad was rolling out plastic on the living room floor. Mrs. Talbot was holding one end for him. Mom was standing holding the card table, still folded up, waiting for them to finish so she could set it up in front of the stove for supper. Nobody even looked up. I unslung my backpack and took out Mrs. Talbot’s magazine and the letter.

“There was a letter at the post office,” I said. “From the Clearys.”

They all looked up.

“Where did you find it?” Dad said.

“On the floor, mixed in with all the third class stuff. I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

Mom leaned the card table against the couch and sat down. Mrs. Talbot just looked blank.

“The Clearys were our best friends,” I said. “From Illinois. They were supposed to come see us the summer before last. We were going to hike up Pikes Peak and everything.”

David banged in the door. He looked at Mom sitting on the couch and Dad and Mrs. Talbot still standing there holding the plastic like a couple of statues. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“Lynn says she found a letter from the Clearys today,” Dad said.

David dumped the logs on the hearth. One of them rolled onto the carpet and stopped at Mom’s feet. Neither of them bent over to pick it up.

“Shall I read it out loud?” I said, looking at Mrs. Talbot. I was still holding her magazine. I opened up the envelope and took out the letter.

“ ‘Dear Janice and Todd and everybody,’ ” I read. “ ‘How are things in the glorious West? We’re raring to come out and see you, though we may not make it quite as soon as we hoped. How are Carla and David and the baby? I can’t wait to see little David. Is he walking yet? I bet Grandma Janice is so proud she’s busting her britches. Is that right? Do you Westerners wear britches or have you all gone to designer jeans?’ ”

David was standing by the fireplace. He put his head down across his arms on the mantelpiece.

“ ‘I’m sorry I haven’t written, but we were very busy with Rick’s graduation and anyway I thought we would beat the letter out to Colorado, but now it looks like there’s going to be a slight change in plans. Rick has definitely decided to join the Army. Richard and I have talked ourselves blue in the face, but I guess we’ve just made matters worse. We can’t even get him to wait to join until after the trip to Colorado. He says we’d spend the whole trip trying to talk him out of it, which is true, I guess. I’m just so worried about him. The Army! Rick says I worry too much, which is true, too, I guess, but what if there was a war?’ ”

Mom bent over and picked up the log that David had dropped and laid it on the couch beside her.

“ ‘If it’s okay with you out there in the Golden West, we’ll wait until Rick is done with basic the first week in July and then all come out. Please write and let us know if this is okay. I’m sorry to switch plans on you like this at the last minute, but look at it this way: You have a whole extra month to get into shape for hiking up Pikes Peak. I don’t know about you, but I sure can use it.’ ”

Mrs. Talbot had dropped her end of the plastic. It hadn’t landed on
the stove this time, but it was so close to it, it was curling from the heat. Dad just stood there watching it. He didn’t even try to pick it up.

“ ‘How are the girls? Sonja is growing like a weed. She’s out for track this year and bringing home lots of medals and dirty sweat socks. And you should see her knees! They’re so banged up I almost took her to the doctor. She says she scrapes them on the hurdles, and her coach says there’s nothing to worry about, but it does worry me a little. They just don’t seem to heal. Do you ever have problems like that with Lynn and Melissa?

“ ‘I know, I know. I worry too much. Sonja’s fine. Rick’s fine. Nothing awful’s going to happen between now and the first week in July, and we’ll see you then. Love, the Clearys. P.S. Has anybody ever fallen off Pikes Peak?’ ”

Nobody said anything. I folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope.

“I should have written them,” Mom said. “I should have told them, ‘Come now.’ Then they would have been here.”

“And we would probably have climbed up Pikes Peak that day and gotten to see it all go blooey and us with it,” David said, lifting his head up. He laughed and his voice caught on the laugh and kind of cracked. “I guess we should be glad they didn’t come.”

“Glad?” Mom said. She was rubbing her hands on the legs of her jeans. “I suppose we should be glad Carla took Melissa and the baby to Colorado Springs that day so we didn’t have so many mouths to feed.” She was rubbing her jeans so hard she was going to rub a hole right through them. “I suppose we should be glad those looters shot Mr. Talbot.”

“No,” Dad said. “But we should be glad the looters didn’t shoot the rest of us. We should be glad they only took the canned goods and not the seeds. We should be glad the fires didn’t get this far. We should be glad …”

“That we still have mail delivery?” David said. “Should we be glad about that, too?” He went outside and shut the door behind him.

“When I didn’t hear from them I should have called or something,” Mom said.

Dad was still looking at the ruined plastic. I took the letter over to him. “Do you want to keep it or what?” I said.

“I think it’s served its purpose,” he said. He wadded it up, tossed it in the stove, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t even get burned. “Come help me on the greenhouse, Lynn,” he said.

It was pitch-dark outside and really getting cold. My sneakers were starting to get stiff. Dad held the flashlight and pulled the plastic tight over the wooden slats. I stapled the plastic every two inches all the way around the frame and my finger about every other time. After we finished one frame I asked Dad if I could go back in and put on my boots.

“Did you get the seeds for the tomatoes?” he said, like he hadn’t even heard me. “Or were you too busy looking for the letter?”

“I didn’t look for it,” I said. “I found it. I thought you’d be glad to get the letter and know what happened to the Clearys.”

Dad was pulling the plastic across the next frame, so hard it was getting little puckers in it. “We already knew,” he said.

He handed me the flashlight and took the staple gun out of my hand. “You want me to say it?” he said. “You want me to tell you exactly what happened to them? All right. I would imagine they were close enough to Chicago to have been vaporized when the bombs hit. If they were, they were lucky. Because there aren’t any mountains like ours around Chicago. So if they weren’t, they got caught in the firestorm or they died of flash burns or radiation sickness, or else some looter shot them.”

“Or their own family,” I said.

“Or their own family.” He put the staple gun against the wood and pulled the trigger. “I have a theory about what happened the summer before last,” he said. He moved the gun down and shot another staple into the wood. “I don’t think the Russians started it, or the United States, either. I think it was some little terrorist group somewhere or maybe just one person. I don’t think they had any idea what would happen
when they dropped their bomb. I think they were just so hurt and angry and frightened by the way things were that they just lashed out. With a bomb.” He stapled the frame clear to the bottom and straightened up to start on the other side. “What do you think of that theory, Lynn?”

“I told you,” I said. “I found the letter while I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

He turned and pointed the staple gun at me. “But whatever reason they did it for, they brought the whole world crashing down on their heads. Whether they meant it or not, they had to live with the consequences.”

“If they lived,” I said. “If somebody didn’t shoot them.”

“I can’t let you go to the post office anymore,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What about Mrs. Talbot’s magazines?”

“Go check on the fire,” he said.

I went back inside. David had come back and was standing by the fireplace again, looking at the wall. Mom had set up the card table and the folding chairs in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Talbot was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, only it looked like it was onions the way she was crying.

The fire had practically gone out. I stuck a couple of wadded-up magazine pages in to get it going again. The fire flared up with a brilliant blue and green. I tossed a couple of pinecones and some sticks onto the burning paper. One of the pinecones rolled off to the side and lay there in the ashes. I grabbed for it and hit my hand on the door of the stove.

Right in the same place. Great. The blister would pull the old scab off and we could start all over again. And of course Mom was standing right there, holding the pan of potato soup. She put it on the top of the stove and grabbed up my hand like it was evidence in a crime or something. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there holding it and blinking.