“No, I mean—us. We’re all going on a trip.”
“Oh. That trip. Yes.”
“Are you excited, Annie?”
“It’s not for some time yet, Bobby. A few months, anyhow.”
“They have to build the spaceship.”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I have a lot of growing up to do.”
“There’s no rush.”
“I got kind of… left behind.”
She wanted to say, “I’m sorry!”—but couldn’t find her voice.
“I’m getting stronger,” Bobby said. “Annie—look what I can do!”
A wooden railing ran all around the patio of the Wellborne building. Before she could say anything, Bobby had boosted himself onto the banister. He was clinging to the narrow timber with hands and feet… then he stood up, like a tightrope walker, balancing himself.
His hips stuck out in bony ridges from the loose jeans. His arms, thrown out for balance, were fragile as twigs.
A brisk wind could knock him down from there. She felt a surge of panic. “Bobby, stop it!”
“No, Annie, look\” He took two tentative steps. Proud of his balance. Proud of his new life.
“Bobby, you’ll hurt yourself!”
“No, I—”
But she was up without thinking about it, running to him, grabbing him around his painfully thin waist and lifting him down. He was lighter than she expected. He was as light as a nine-year-old.
“Annie, Annie, it’s okay!”
Bobby wrapped his skinny arms around her and pressed his misshapen head against her cheek.
“I know why you’re crying,” he whispered. Did he? Oh, God!
“That was all a long time ago,” Bobby said. “We were kids. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
And Annie cried in her brother’s arms as if she had tapped a reservoir of tears, a well of sorrow ancient and eager for the light.
Part Three
Indian Summer
Chapter 19
Annie and Bobby
Tom Kindle decided he would stay in Buchanan until the end of the World Series. After that… well, the horizon had an alluring look, these rainy autumn days.
Matt Wheeler didn’t appear to approve of the idea.
Kindle walked with him through the empty hallways of the regional hospital. Some of the overhead fluorescents had burned out; some flickered like candles in a cold wind. The building was increasingly spooky, in Kindle’s opinion. Nobody but Matt came around anymore.
“I’d be happier if you stayed,” Matt said.
Kindle didn’t answer. He was concentrating on the pleasure of locomotion. Christ in a basket, it was good to get out of that wheelchair! It was good to be walking under his own steam.
It hurt like hell, but it was good anyway.
Monday he’d made it halfway to the maternity wing and back; today, all the way to Maternity and far beyond, as far as the fabled corridors of Physiotherapy, where empty sitz baths gleamed like strange idols in dim green rooms.
He stumbled once. Matt took his arm. “Don’t overdo it.”
“No pain, no gain.”
“It was a bad break. At your age, you don’t heal as fast as you used to.”
“Thank you, Dr. Kildare.”
“You want me to lie?”
“Every once in a while it might be nice.”
A pause. Matt said, “You’re serious about leaving Buchanan?”
“Yes.” Kindle gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. “Okay, now we turn around.”
They shuffled back through ancient odors of ether and antiseptic. Kindle wore his old jeans and a cotton workshirt. The doctor wore his hospital gown over a similar outfit. We don’t look all that different, Kindle thought. He caught their reflection in a rainy corridor window. Not doctor and patient. Just two guys who ought to shave more often. Two guys with similar worry lines. Different pain.
Matt said, “You have somewhere in particular to go?”
“It’s a big country… I haven’t seen it all.”
In fact, he was thinking about the Wind River Range, the Tetons, that area. He hadn’t seen Wyoming for about twenty-five years.
“What about the Committee?”
“I never signed on to salvage Buchanan. I barely lived here, you know, before Contact. The Committee’ll get on without me.”
“You said you’d do radio.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do radio. I’m not leaving yet.”
“There’s a meeting at the end of the week.”
“Right, I’ll be there.”
“I want you to talk to me before you leave,” Matt said. “Maybe I can change your mind.”
Kindle promised he would, though it rubbed him the wrong way. No strings attached, damn it. He’d leave when he felt like it. Stay or go as the spirit moved him.
It was how he’d lived his life. Why change now?
Matt left him alone in his room. Kindle checked the TV, but there was nothing but fuzz. All they showed on TV anymore was a couple of hours of news per day. Plus the Major League playoffs.
The first-of-November Committee meeting was brief and morose. Five people showed up in addition to Kindle and Matt Wheeler. Joey Commoner and Beth Porter were two of them. Abby Cushman, the somewhat ditzy farm lady, failed to appear. Paul Jacopetti unfortunately did. The pessimistic ex-tool-and-die maker issued his usual evil-minded prophecies, including a prediction that the Helper recently arrived at the City Hall Turnaround would murder them all while they slept. Poison gas, maybe. Matt seemed too dazed to refute this paranoia, and Kindle listened with disgust.
After that they held their first election. Matt stood for chairman. His single opponent was—inevitably—Paul Jacopetti, who didn’t think Matt should run unopposed, “although of course this whole exercise is futile.” There was a show of hands and Matt took the vote six to one. (“Figures,” Jacopetti said.)
Old business. Kindle promised he would drive down to Causgrove Electronics the next day and look for a ham set.
“A lot of those stores are closed,” Matt reminded him. “Call first. Or call the owner and see if he’ll let you in.”
“Or I could jimmy the lock.”
Matt shot him a disapproving look. “I don’t think it’s come to that.” Maybe, Kindle thought. Or maybe not.
But he did as Matt asked: phoned the store, no answer, phoned three Causgroves out of the book until he found the one who owned the shop.
“You’re right, Mr. Kindle, the front door’s locked. Locked it myself. Force of habit, I guess. -But the back is open. You can get in that way.”
“You want to meet me there?”
“For what purpose?”
“Well, I can write you a check. Unless you want cash.”
“Please, don’t bother. Just go ahead and take what you need.”
“I’m sorry? What?”
“We had a reasonable stock last time I looked. I presume you can find the stockroom, or just root around the displays. If we have what you want, take it.”
“Pardon me. You said—take it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just—take it?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes. I’m happy to see the goods serving a purpose. I thought they’d all turned into scrap metal. Please, take whatever you want. But it’s nice of you to have called, Mr. Kindle.”
The connection broke at the other end. Kindle stared at the phone for a while.
His first experience with a motor vehicle since the accident wasn’t his pickup truck, which had been towed or trashed, but a car Matt Wheeler left for him in the hospital lot: a little blue Japanese device. Kindle was long-legged, and the act of climbing inside this automobile left him feeling like he’d been folded into a mailbox. His knees bumped the wheel until he figured out how to lever back the seat. Everything was digital. The dashboard looked like a cockpit display.