It was her, all right. No tape. She stood in front of the foodbelt, which offered the usual soysynth eggs, bacon, cereals, and breads, plus some fresh genemod strawberries. I don’t like genemod strawberries, me. They might keep for weeks, but they never taste like them little wild sweet berries that grow on the hillsides in June.
“. — . serving her people with the best she has, no matter the need, no matter the hour, no matter the emergency,” said a handsome donkey into a camera ’bot. “Janet Carol Land, on the spot to serve East Oleanta — on the spot to serve you. A politician who deserves those memorable words from the Bible: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’!”
Land ^railed. She was a looker, her, the way donkey women are when they’re not young: fine soft skin and pink lips and hair in pretty silver waves. Too skinny, though. Not like Annie. Who pressed her dark-berry lips together like she was going to squeeze cider with them.
Land said to the handsome man, “Thank you, Royce. As you know, the cafe is the heart of any aristo town. That’s why when a cafe malfunctions, I move heaven and earth to get it operable again. As these good citizens of East Oleanta can attest.”
“Let’s talk to some of them,” Royce said, showing all his teeth. He and Land walked to a table where Jack Sawicki sat, him, looking’ cornered. “Mayor Sawicki, what do you think of the service Con-gresswoman Land provided your town today?”
Paulie Cenverno looked up, him, from where he ate at the next table. With him was Celie Kane. Annie’s lower lip trembled itself into a half-grin, half-wince.
Jack said miserably, “We’re awful happy, us, that the foodbelt’s fixed, and we—”
“When you fuckers gonna get them rabid raccoons killed?” Celie demanded.
Royce’s face froze, it. “I don’t think—”
“You better think, you, and think hard about them coons, or you and the Congresswoman gonna be thinking about new jobs!”
“Cut,” Royce said. “Don’t worry, Janet, we’ll edit it.” His smile looked like it was foamed onto his face, but I saw his eyes, me, and I looked away. My fighting days are over, unless I have to fight for Annie or Lizzie.
Royce took the Congresswoman’s elbow, him, and steered her toward the door. Celie shrilled, “I mean it, me! It’s been days now and you guys done shit! ‘Public servants!’ You ain’t nothing but—”
“Celie,” Jack and Paulie both said.
Land broke free of Royce. She turned back, her, to Celie. “Your concern for your town’s safety is natural, ma’am. The warden ’bot and any sick wildlife are not in my jurisdiction — they fall to District Supervisor Samuelson — but when I return to Albany I’ll do everything in my power to see that the problem is solved.” She looked straight into Celie’s eyes, real steady, and it was Celie who looked away first, her.
Celie didn’t say nothing. Land smiled, her, and turned to her crew, ^think we’re done here, Royce. I’ll meet you outside.” She walked to the door, back straight, head high. And the only reason I ever saw anything different was because of where I stood, me, sideways to the door, between Annie and any trouble. Congress-woman Land reached the door and she was a smiling pretty cocksure politician, her. Then she went through the door and she was a woman with tired, tired eyes.
I glanced at Annie to see if she saw. But she was clucking at Celie Kane. Annie might of grinned, her, at Celie’s balls, but deep down inside Annie don’t approve of sassing public servants. They can’t help being donkeys. I could almost hear her say it, me. /
Lizzie said in her clear young voice, “That Congresswoman can’t really help get the warden ’bot fixed in Albany, can she? She was just pretending, her.”
“Oh hush,” Annie said. “You never will learn, you, when to keep your mouth quiet and when not.”
Two days later, two days of everybody staying inside, us, and no warden ’bot tech from Albany, we made a hunting party. It took hours of talk that went around and around in dizzies, but we made it. Livers ain’t supposed to have no guns, us. No warehouses stock a District Supervisor Tara Eleanor Schmidt .22 rifle. No political campaigns give away a Senator Jason Howard Adams shotgun or a County Legislature Terry William Monaghan pistol. But we got them, us.
Paulie Cenverno dug up his granddaddy’s shotgun, him, from a plastisynth box behind the school. Plastisynth keeps out damn near everything: dirt, damp, rust, bugs. Eddie Rollins and Jim Swikehardt and old Doug Kane had their daddies’ rifles, them. Sue Rollins and her sister, Krystal Mandor, said they’d share a family Matlin; I didn’t see, me, how that could work. Two men I didn’t know had shotguns. Al Rauber had a pistol. Two of the teenage stomps showed up, grinning, not armed. Just what we needed, us. Altogether, we were twenty.
“Let’s split, us, into pairs, and set out in ten straight lines from the cafe,” Jack Sawicki said.
“You sound like a goddamn donkey,” Eddie Rollins said in disgust. The stomps grinned.
“You got a better idea, you?” Jack said. He held his rifle real tight over his bulging green jacks.
“We’re Livers,” Krystal Mandor said, “let us.go where we want, us.”
Jack said, “And what if somebody gets shot, them? You want the police franchise down on us?”
Eddie said, “I want to hunt raccoons, me, like an aristo. Don’t give me no orders, Jack.”
“Fine,” Jack said. “Go ahead, you. I’m not saying another goddamn word.”
After ten minutes of arguing we set off in pairs, us, in ten straight lines.
I walked with Doug Kane, Celie’s father. Two old men, us, slow and limping. But Doug still knew, him, how to walk quiet in the woods. Off to my right I heard somebody whooping and laughing. One of the stomps. After a while, the sound died away.
The woods were cool and sweet-smelling, so thick overhead that the floor wasn’t much overgrown. We stepped, us, on pine needles that sent up their clean smell. White birches, slim as Lizzie, rustled. Under the trees moss grew dark green, and in the sunny patches there was daisies and buttercups and black-eyed Susans. A mourning dove called, the calmest sound in the whole world.
“Pretty,” Doug said, so quiet that a rabbit upwind didn’t even twitch its long ears.
Toward noon, the trees got skimpier and the underbrush thicker. I smelled blackberries somewheres, which made me think of Annie. I figured, me, that we come at least six hard miles from East Oleanta. All we seen was rabbits, a doe, and a mess of harmless snakes. No coons. And any rabid coons out this far, killing them wouldn’t do the town no good anyway. It was time to turn back.
“Gotta … sit down, me,” Doug said.
I looked at him, me, and my skin turned cold. He was pale as the birch bark, his eyelids fluttering like two hummingbirds. He dropped the rifle, him, and it went off — old fool had the safety off. The bullet buried itself in a tree trunk. Doug clutched his chest and fell over. I’d been so busy, me, enjoying air and flowers and I ain’t even seen he was having a heart attack.
“Sit down! Sit down!” I eased him onto a patch of some kind of ground cover, all shiny green leaves. Doug lay on his side, him, breathing hard: whoooo, whoooo. His right hand batted the air but I knew, me, that his eyes didn’t see nothing. They were wild.
“Lay quiet, Doug. Don’t move, you! I’ll go get help, me, I’ll make them bring the medunit…”
Whoooo, whoooo, whoooo… then the breathing noises stopped.
I thought: He’s gone. But his bony old chest still rose and fell, just shallow and quiet now. His eyes glazed.