The rest look like refugees, the word she denied on the sidewalks outside the condo. Dirty people in T-shirts with bundles and plastic grocery bags and even a couple of suitcases. She has seen people like this as they walked. Walked past them sitting by the side of the road. Sat by the side of the road as others walked past them. But to see them all together like this … this is what it will be like in Canada? A camp full of people with bags of wretched clothes waiting for someone to give them something to eat? A toddler with no pants and curly hair watches solemnly like one of those children in those “save a child” commercials. He’s just as dirty. His hair is blond.
She rejects it. Rejects it all so viscerally that she stops and for a moment can’t walk to the people in the rest stop. She doesn’t know if she would have walked past, or if she would have turned around, or if she would have struck off across the country. It doesn’t matter what she would have done, because Nate and Franny walk right on up the exit ramp. Franny’s tank top is bright, insistent pink under its filth and her shorts have a tear in them, and her legs are brown and skinny and she could be a child on a news channel after a hurricane or an earthquake, clad in the loud synthetic colors so at odds with the dirt or ash that coats her. Plastic and synthetics are the indestructibles left to the survivors.
Jane is ashamed. She wants to explain that she’s not like this. She wants to say, she’s an American. By which she means she belongs to the military side, although she has never been interested in the military, never particularly liked soldiers.
If she could call her parents in Pennsylvania. Get a phone from one of the soldiers. Surrender. You were right, Mom. I should have straightened up and flown right. I should have worried more about school. I should have done it your way. I’m sorry. Can we come home?
Would her parents still be there? Do the phones work just north of Philadelphia? It has not until this moment occurred to her that it is all gone.
She sticks her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out, sick with understanding. It is all gone. She has thought herself all brave and realistic, getting Franny to Canada, but somehow she didn’t until this moment realize that it all might be gone. That there might be nowhere for her where the electricity is still on and there are still carpets on the hardwood floors and someone still cares about damask.
Nate has finally noticed that she isn’t with them and he looks back, frowning at her.
What’s wrong?
his expression says. She limps after them, defeated.
Nate walks up to a group of people camped around and under a stone picnic table. “Are they giving out water?” he asks, meaning the military.
“Yeah,” says a guy in a Cowboys football jersey. “If you go ask, they’ll give you water.”
“Food?”
“They say tonight.”
All the shade is taken. Nate takes their water bottles—a couple of two-liters and a plastic gallon milk jug. “You guys wait, and I’ll get us some water,” he says.
Jane doesn’t like being near these people, so she walks back to a wire fence at the back of the rest area and sits down. She puts her arms on her knees and puts her head down. She is looking at the grass.
“Mom?” Franny says.
Jane doesn’t answer.
“Mom? Are you okay?” After a moment more. “Are you crying?”
“I’m just tired,” June says to the grass.
Franny doesn’t say anything after that.
Nate comes back with all the bottles filled. Jane hears him coming and hears Franny say, “Oh, wow. I’m so thirsty.”
Nate nudges her arm with a bottle. “Hey, Babe. Have some.”
She takes a two-liter from him and drinks some. It’s got a flat, faintly metal/chemical taste. She gets a big drink and feels a little better. “I’ll be back,” she says. She walks to the shelter where the bathrooms are.
“You don’t want to go in there,” a black man says to her. The whites of his eyes are yellow.
She ignores him and pushes in the door. Inside, the smell is excruciating, and the sinks are all stopped and full of trash. There is some light from windows up near the ceiling. She looks at herself in the dim mirror. She pours a little water into her hand and scrubs at her face. There is a little bit of paper towel left on a roll, and she peels it off and cleans her face and her hands, using every bit of the scrap of paper towel. She wets her hair and combs her fingers through it, working the tangles for a long time until it is still curly but not the rat’s nest it was. She is so careful with the water. Even so, she uses every bit of it on her face and arms and hair. She would kill for a little lipstick. For a comb. Anything. At least she has water.
She is cute. The sun hasn’t been too hard on her. She practices smiling.
When she comes out of the bathroom, the air is so sweet. The sunlight is blinding.
She walks over to the soldiers and smiles. “Can I get some more water, please?”
There are three of them at the water truck. One of them is a blond-haired boy with a brick-red complexion. “You sure can,” he says, smiling back at her.
She stands, one foot thrust out in front of her like a ballerina, back a little arched. “You’re sweet,” she says. “Where are you from?”
“We’re all stationed at Fort Hood,” he says. “Down in Texas. But we’ve been up north for a couple of months.”
“How are things up north?” she asks.
“Crazy,” he says. “But not as crazy as they are in Texas, I guess.”
She has no plan. She is just moving with the moment. Drawn like a moth.
He gets her water. All three of them are smiling at her.
“How long are you here?” she asks. “Are you like a way station or something?”
One of the others, a skinny Chicano, laughs. “Oh, no. We’re here tonight and then headed west.”
“I used to live in California,” she says. “In Pasadena. Where the Rose Parade is. I used to walk down that street where the cameras are every day.”
The blond glances around. “Look, we aren’t supposed to be talking too much right now. But later on, when it gets dark, you should come back over here and talk to us some more.”
“Mom!” Franny says when she gets back to the fence, “You’re all cleaned up!”
“Nice, Babe,” Nate says. He’s frowning a little.
“Can I get cleaned up?” Franny asks.
“The bathroom smells really bad,” Jane says. “I don’t think you want to go in there.” But she digs her other T-shirt out of her backpack and wets it and washes Franny’s face. The girl is never going to be pretty, but now that she’s not chubby, she’s got a cute thing going on. She’s got the sense to work it, or will learn it. “You’re a girl that the boys are going to look at,” Jane says to her.
Franny smiles, delighted.
“Don’t you think?” Jane says to Nate. “She’s got that thing, that sparkle, doesn’t she?”
“She sure does,” Nate says.
They nap in the grass until the sun starts to go down, and then the soldiers line everyone up and hand out MREs. Nate gets Beef Ravioli, and Jane gets Sloppy Joe. Franny gets Lemon Pepper Tuna and looks ready to cry, but Jane offers to trade with her. The meals are positive cornucopias—a side dish, a little packet of candy, peanut butter and crackers, fruit punch powder. Everybody has different things, and Jane makes everybody give everyone else a taste.
Nate keeps looking at her oddly. “You’re in a great mood.”
“It’s like a party,” she says
Jane and Franny are really pleased by the moist towelette. Franny carefully saves her plastic fork, knife, and spoon. “Was your tuna okay?” she asks. She is feeling guilty now that the food is gone.
“It was good,” Jane says. “And all the other stuff made it really special. And I got the best dessert.”
The night comes down. Before they got on the road, Jane didn’t know how dark night was. Without electric lights it is cripplingly dark. But the soldiers have lights.
Jane says, “I’m going to go see if I can find out about the camp.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nate says.
“No,” Jane says. “They talk to a girl more than they’ll talk to a guy. You keep Franny company.”
She scouts around the edge of the light until she sees the blond soldier. He says, “There you are!”
“Here I am!” she says.
They are standing around a truck where they’ll sleep this night, shooting the shit. The blond soldier boosts her into the truck, into the darkness. “So you aren’t so conspicuous,” he says, grinning.
Two of the men standing and talking aren’t wearing uniforms. It takes her a while to figure out that they’re civilian contractors. They aren’t soldiers. They are technicians, nothing like the soldiers. They are softer, easier in their polo shirts and khaki pants. The soldiers are too sure in their uniforms, but the contractors, they’re used to getting the leftovers. They’re
grateful
. They have a truck of their own, a white pickup truck that travels with the convoy. They do something with satellite tracking, but Jane doesn’t really care what they do.
It takes a lot of careful maneuvering, but one of them finally whispers to her, “We’ve got some beer in our truck.”
The blond soldier looks hurt by her defection.
She stays out of sight in the morning, crouched among the equipment in the back of the pickup truck. The soldiers hand out MREs. Ted, one of the contractors, smuggles her one.
She thinks of Franny. Nate will keep an eye on her. Jane was only a year older than Franny when she lit out for California the first time. For a second she pictures Franny’s face as the convoy pulls out.
Then she doesn’t think of Franny.
She doesn’t know where she is going. She is in motion.
I will forget to thank someone. I always do. Please, I beg forgiveness in advance.
First, thanks to the folks at the Rio Hondo workshop: many of these stories were critiqued at 9,000 feet in the Taos Ski Valley. I can’t thank all of you because I will forget someone, I know but thanks especially to Walter Jon Williams who first brought me to a part of the country I love more than I can say. To L. Timmi Duchamp, and to Ellen Datlow, who asked for stories. To Caroline Spector, who read for me. To the group in Austin—Jessica Reisman, Caroline Yoachim, Ellen Van Hensbergen, Jen Volant, and Meg McCarron—reading, food, and cocktails. Thanks to the folks at WisCon for making the space in the world that they do. To Karen Joy Fowler for writing what she writes as much as for her insightful comments. To Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link for being so enthusiastic about, of all things, another collection of short stories. To Jackie Tunure at Fourth Wall Studios, who read for me in Los Angeles. To all the people I met at Clarion who have started out as students and gone on to be come friends and colleagues—you have no idea how much you have taught me.
Publication HistoryTo Adam who asked me to write “The Naturalist” based on a dream he had, and to Bob, who has always treated me as if there was nothing at all strange about my choice of careers.
These stories were originally published as follows:
“The Naturalist”
Subterranean Online,
spring 2010
“Special Economics,”
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy,
May 2008
“Useless Things,”
Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy,
October 2009
“The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large,”
Eclipse One,
October 2007
“The Kingdom of the Blind,”
Plugged In,
May 2008
“Going to France,”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
22
,
June 2008
“Honeymoon,” “After the Apocalypse,” and “The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” appear here for the first time.
Maureen F. McHugh has lived in NYC; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; and Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of a collection,
Mothers & Other Monsters
(Story Prize finalist), and four novels, including
China Mountain Zhang
(Tiptree Award winner) and
Nekropolis
(a
New York Times
Editor’s Choice). McHugh has also worked on alternate-reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.
Since 2001, Small Beer Press, an independent publishing house, has published satisfying and surreal novels and short story collections by award-winning writers and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you’ll never be able to forget:
Joan Aiken,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Poppy Z. Brite,
Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans
Ted Chiang,
Stories of Your Life and Others
Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud,
A Life on Paper
(trans. Edward Gauvin)
John Crowley,
Endless Things: A Novel of
Æ
gypt
John Crowley,
The Chemical Wedding*
Alan DeNiro,
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Hal Duncan,
An A-Z of the Fantastic City*
Carol Emshwiller,
The Mount
Carol Emshwiller,
Report to the Men’s Club
Carol Emshwiller,
Carmen Dog: a novel
Kelley Eskridge,
Solitaire: a novel
Karen Joy Fowler,
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories
Greer Gilman,
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales
Angélica Gorodischer,
Kalpa Imperial
(trans. Ursula K. Le Guin)
Alasdair Gray,
Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers
Elizabeth Hand
, Generation Loss
Julia Holmes,
Meeks: a novel
Ayize Jama-Everett,
The Liminal People: a novel*
John Kessel,
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence
Kathe Koja,
Under the Poppy: a novel
Nancy Kress,
The Fountain of Age*
Ellen Kushner
, The Privilege of the Sword
Kelly Link,
Stranger Things Happen
;
Trampoline
(Editor);
Magic for Beginners
Karen Lord,
Redemption in Indigo: a novel
Laurie J. Marks,
Fire Logic: a novel*
Laurie J. Marks,
Earth Logic: a novel*
Laurie J. Marks,
Water Logic: a novel