“Get in,” Speck told the girl.
She shook her head.
“Why not? He can’t hurt you now.”
“You go on. I did what I had to. Now I’m through. You go on and when they ask, tell it all just like it happened.”
Speck backed the truck in front of the log wagon. “Marcy, go on and get your things. There’s no time to argue.”
“My name’s not Marcy,” she said.
“I know it. But it doesn’t matter now,” Speck said. “Get your things.”
“I can’t go with you,” she said.
“If you don’t, I’ll dump him in the swamp where nobody will ever find him.”
“No you won’t. It’s all over, Speck. You go on.”
“You wait for me here. I’ll be back and we’ll tell my daddy. We’ll go to St. Louis to the fair.”
“That’s all over with, Speck. You go on now.”
She wore the white dress and carried the battered suitcase. She had cleaned up the main shack and then packed everything of hers and gathered Calvin’s things from the helper’s shack. She went outside and built a fire and fed the man’s clothes and finally his sailor’s bag into the flames.
Alone by the firelight, Marcy took the glass dome from the suitcase and held it out. At first it seemed empty, a void above the dark outline of the miniature city. But then she shook the thing in her fist and held it out again, and the tiny silver flecks caught the light from the fire and glowed there in the night, brief sparks, like stars you glimpse through boughs of pine.
She set the globe on the table between the two shacks. She picked up her belongings and walked off down the log road, toward the place — she didn’t know where yet — someone was waiting for her.
Part II
Wind, water, and grime
Blown away
by Anthony Dale Gagliano
Homestead
The roof was halfway peeled off the house; the Volkswagen was in the swimming pool; and for the past two nights I had fallen asleep watching the stars fade away into my dreams. Now, two days after the storm, I had taken to sleeping with my rifle because the looters were out, and night was their favorite time. The only good thing was that it was my wife’s car at the bottom of the pool and not mine. She had left me a few weeks before the storm, and I was still feeling a little bitter about it. The bad thing was that she had driven away with my car because it could hold more stuff, so it wasn’t exactly a total victory on my part.
The day after the hurricane, the sky was clear but the world I saw was broken, right down to the streets. I got lost every time I took a walk. Finally, I got my flashlight and dug out an old compass I had kept from the army. I took a bearing on the emptiness of the front door and started rambling around the neighborhood, looking to see what was left. People were creeping around like zombies and digging through the ruins of their houses. I passed an old man bent over like a prospector on a nameless street. He straightened up and looked at me.
“You got a cigarette?” he asked.
“I’m trying to scout some out,” I told him. “There a store around here somewheres?”
He pointed to the north. “I think over that way. See that flagpole? It used to be right by there. Maybe it still is.”
I looked out across the damage and the distance. The flagpole looked a long way off. In Miami you drive every place, and I wasn’t used to walking.
“What brand you smoke?” I asked.
He looked bewildered by the question. “I don’t know. I don’t smoke.” I noticed then that he was wearing underwear — a pair of polka dot boxers and a white tank top that was never going to be white again.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I’m not much of a smoker myself.”
I started walking, sometimes right through people’s houses, not to be mean or anything but because the houses were all in pieces spread out like a puzzle. It was hard to tell where a thing began or ended. I could see that my place had done better than most. At least my furniture was still inside. I just hoped it was still there when I got back.
I smelled a barbecue and came up on a group of people sitting in a ring of sofas like they were inside a living room. Some people were laughing. They looked like a big family, except that some of them were black and some of them were white and some of them were speaking in Spanish. A black man was standing over a barbecue made out of a pair of steel drums with a grate over them. He held a pair of tongs and was turning pieces of meat and chicken over with them. He looked at me, and I looked at him. Then he waved me over. The fire and the heat made him look like a Vulcan. It was the best food I ever had.
I finally found the store. Where, I don’t know. It was a 7-Eleven. The windows were shattered and people were climbing in and out of the place, carrying armloads of cans and boxes of cereal and cases of beer. I had never done anything like this before and for a moment I just stood there looking. Finally, I stepped over the jagged sill and into the store, feeling like I was crossing some kind of line, which I was, except it was a little hard to see exactly what kind of line it was. At least I wasn’t a cannibal, I told myself. So far, I had only made it down to shoplifting.
I was behind the counter looking for smokes when the squad car pulled up, lights blazing like wild Indians. Everybody started to run like roaches. The cop came in through the window with his hand on his gun. I stood up. I put my hands up. He was a black kid — not much more than a rookie, I thought — and everything about him said soldier. He pointed his eyes and his gun at me at the same time, shook his head, and holstered the automatic.
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he said calmly. His voice was edgeless, as though he had said, Give me a cup of coffee
“Officer—” I started to say.
“I know,” he said. “Don’t tell me. I got no choice. This shit has been going on all day and the captain wants to make a statement. Sorry, man.”
I rotated and he bound my hands with a plastic tie. It was like an episode of Cops
“I’ve never been arrested before,” I said, more to myself than to the officer.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll be out in the morning, maybe even later today.”
The cop seemed tired, though not physically; his movements were crisp and professional. He was tired in another way. I could feel it coming off him. He reminded me of a teacher who had made it to the end of a long day at a bad school. He walked beside me without holding my arm, as though we were a couple of buddies heading to the bar for a beer or two. Sometimes he even walked a little bit ahead of me, as though he had forgotten that he had a prisoner. I guess I didn’t seem that dangerous.
Right before we got to the cop car, he bent over and picked up a photograph that had blown in from another life. He stared at it for a moment, then held it up so I could see. It was the picture of a young woman, very pretty in a Nebraska sort of way: big smile, corn hair, gray eyes — innocent. I looked at the picture of the girl for a moment and nodded. Then, very gently, almost reverently, he placed the picture back on the ground on the exact spot where he had found it, as though it belonged there. Neither of us said anything. I felt a strange, indefinite sadness rise in me all the way up to my neck until I felt as though I were wearing a heavy curtain over my shoulders.
“You find stuff like that everywhere,” the cop said. To me he sounded like a tour guide in a ruined temple who knew the tale of ancient disaster so well that he had learned to tell it without words.