Gibbon's Decline and Fall

  “Shall we burn them as Mike requested?” asked Carolyn.

  “Yes,” said Faye. “Quickly. This is all disgusting.”

  She crumpled the papers, lit a spill from the stove, and set them alight, pushing the unburned portions into the flame. A thin smoke rose into the last of the sunset, drifting, dissipating. A small wind stirred the few tiny scraps of paper that had only partially burned. They sat looking at the ashes, stunned, seeing there all their lives and purposes, reduced to ashes. If the Alliance succeeded, there would be no women doctors, sculptors, scientists. There would be no women lawyers or philanthropists or managers of fisheries. Though Aggie was pretending that might be a good thing, that’s all it was. Pretense.

  Darkness swallowed up sight. Each of them went to her own sleeping place and lay there, staring at the stars popping out in the darkening sky, listening to cricket noises. Then Carolyn sat up, aware of another sound. To the north a chopper passed and returned, passed and returned. They all heard it, whop, whop, whop, nearing, then fading; low, then high, like a circling mosquito.

  It began to come toward them. To the north Carolyn saw a light from the sky.

  “Quickly,” she cried. “Gather up your stuff and get into the car. All of it. Hurry!”

  They variously rolled or leaped from sleeping bags, gathered up bags and clothing, ran or hobbled toward the Land Rover. Ophy ran back to get something. Carolyn seized up the stove by its handle. The sounds of the chopper were coming closer as they struggled into or behind the car, against the clay wall.

  “Roll down the outside windows,” Carolyn instructed. “So they won’t reflect light. Put the sleeping bags out to cover the sides of the car. Ophy, put your sleeping bag over the windshield and top.”

  She herself reached through the open window and turned the rearview mirror down, away from the sky.

  The whop whop whop came closer, louder.

  “Lolly,” whispered Jessamine. “She’s still out there!”

  She started to get out, but Carolyn grabbed her arm. “Leave her. She’s all rolled up. If she doesn’t wake …”

  Then the chopper was above them, its searchlight probing the desert, peering behind yuccas and into arroyos, setting skeletal chollas into glaring relief. The light slipped through the mesquite above them without stopping. It crossed the place they had sat to have their supper, slipping through the ashes of Mike’s document, scattered gray on a soil almost as gray. It slipped across Lolly’s huddled form in its olive-drab bedroll, and went on south without stopping, a dark dragonfly shape against the stars, supported on its narrow beam of light. When it had gone some distance, it turned west.

  Worldlessly, Ophy put her sleeping bag along the wall of the arroyo in the shadow, then lay down once more. Without comment the others followed suit.

  “Sophy said she had an enemy,” said Carolyn into the silence. “She spent her life trying to save women, and she said she had an enemy. She must have known about the Alliance.”

  No one offered comment. The helicopter noise diminished, the night filled with cricket noises once more, and eventually, uneasily, they slept.

  In Calcutta, Paris, Durban, Adelaide; in Beijing, Osaka, St. Petersburg, Stockholm; in Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City, Rangoon; in cities all around the world, as evening came, old women assembled under cover of the dusk. Up out of the clamorous hollows of subways, down from the attics of abandoned warehouses, out of doorways, out of alleys, out of the back doors of neat houses in the suburbs, out of all-night do-it-yourself laundries, out of shelters and slum warrens, from behind Dumpsters, and out of shacks they came, drifting together like tattered leaves blown by an autumn wind, swirling, casually turning, joining in larger drifts that went spiraling down streets and alleys to join others already there.

  “Did you hear the beast baying?” they asked one another. “Just as the sun went down, did you hear it?”

  In the same cities, as dark fell, men came out of bars onto the sidewalks, muttering among themselves, small clots of them swaggering off in one direction or another to meet another little clot, also swaggering along. Trucks with rifle racks and NRA bumper stickers pulled over to the sides of the streets and men got out. Police cars ghosted to a stop under overpasses, in dark alleys, and officers got out to join other men on the street corners. When the marchers with their robes and whips and drums came along, men were already there, lined up along the sidewalks, watching, ready to join the procession.

  “The summons,” they told one another eagerly. “It’s the summons …

  When dark came, there were no young women on the street. Not one, Not a twentyish waitress just getting off. Not a thirtyish clerk who’d worked late taking inventory. Not a female officer, all of whom had called in sick or decided to catch up on paperwork or gotten tied up somewhere on a case. There were not even any rebellious teens, with their ratty hair and short skirts. The men had been summoned (so they thought, assumed, had been told) to go hunting, but there was no one on the streets for them to hunt. They were there to strike a counterblow for … for something or other. To let them know they couldn’t get away with it anymore.

  But there was no them on the streets at all.

  A far-off mutter, a whisper, like wind in the grass. A lifted nostril, a raised upper lip, a stag scenting the wind, a bull nosing the air.

  “Women down there,” said one to another, pointing with his chin, jutting his jaw in the direction of downtown. “I can smell ’em.”

  “Women down there,” said another. “He can tell.”

  So the lines turned as men began to walk, without rhythm at first, then gradually to march in time with the pom, pom, pom of the drums.

  Somewhere in the direction of their march, the old women waited.

  The DFC did not sleep long. Carolyn woke suddenly to the sound of a cat purring, a kettle boiling, a purling noise off somewhere in the darkness. She rolled out of the sleeping bag and stood for a moment in the chill air, naked-legged, turning to find a direction. The sound was coming from the west, she thought. Perhaps a little south of west.

  She shook Faye awake, then Ophy, then the others, telling them to get dressed, gather their stuff together, just in case they had to take off in a hurry. The noise came nearer, and then sound became visible, a glow, a halo, a ball of pale-yellow light rolling toward them in the night. When it came nearer, they saw it was a bus, a vehicle faded to the pale organic yellow of late-fall aspen leaves, a fleeting gold aging to gray. When it stopped beside them, they could make out the words “Lizard Rock Public Schools” in peeling letters below the windows.

  The door opened. A very old man came down the steps. He smoked a pipe redolent of woods and mosses and resins, aromatic, exotic, an odor evocative of forests, perhaps even of jungles. The assemblage of bus, man, and smoke was so unexpected that Carolyn felt herself deactivated, able only to stand staring at the vehicle and its driver while her mind sought for the difference between dream and reality and her hand furtively scratched her leg where something had bitten her during her brief sleep. None of the others was more capable than she. All of them stared as she did, as silently and as astonished.

  It was Lolly who walked barefooted across the chill sand to stand spraddled before the old man, rubbing her belly with unselfconscious vigor. “Hi!” she said.

  “Hi,” he replied.

  “Did you know my grandma? Her name was Immaculata Corazon.”

  “I knew her when she was a little girl.”

  “Her sisters lived down here. Their names are Okeah, and Setwon, and Toulenae.”

  “That is true.”

  “They do live here! They really do!”

  He nodded. Lolly turned and came toward Carolyn. “Did you hear him? He says my grandma’s sisters still live here!”

  “I heard him,” said Carolyn.

  The old man raised his voice a little. “Was a helicopter looking for you, a little after sundown?”

  No one commented on that. Faye zipped up her trousers an
d stepped into her boots before approaching the old man. “Where is she?”

  “She?”

  “Sovawanea aTesuawane. You wouldn’t be here unless you knew we were here. You wouldn’t know we were here unless somebody was expecting us. She’s the only one who would be.”

  “Ah.” He tapped his head reflectively. “You are clever.”

  “No,” she said. “I just lack time for politeness or preliminary. She isn’t dead, is she?”

  He shrugged. “What is death, after all?” His English was unaccented, pure, without hint of origin.

  Jessamine said, “ ‘There’ll be more to birth than being born, and less to death than dying.’ Sophy wrote that to me, after my child and grandchild were killed. ‘So long as earth bears golden corn, and hears the wild wings flying.’ ”

  “Yes,” the old man said again. “While there are yet growing things and the flights of birds wrapping the world, there is continuance. Are you ready to go?”

  “The person, people, in the helicopter,” said Carolyn. “Do you know who they were?”

  “They are only servants. A man named Keepe. A man named Martin. One man called Jagger.”

  “Servants?”

  “Of a creature who was not born, ever.”

  “That’s a riddle.”

  “Perhaps, but he smells to me like an unborn one. A crawler out of time.”

  “That sounds just lovely,” snarled Faye. “And you’ve come for us?”

  “Surely. When you’re ready to go. Put your things in the bus. I will bring you back to your car later.”

  Carolyn locked the Land Rover and followed the others onto the straw-yellow vehicle, which was rather better inside than out. It had half a dozen worn but comfortable seats toward the front, a cargo area behind them, and then a partitioned space that looked lived in. Several sacks of scratch grain and pig chow were piled by the side door.

  The bus belied its outward appearance by starting smoothly, almost soundlessly, and moving effortlessly south-westward across the desert, its headlights disclosing little rutty roads that ran north and south and southwest, the wheels sometimes traveling along them for a short distance, never for more than a few hundred yards, then swerving off onto desert once more, turning to miss clumps of twisted gray mesquite, disturbing no leaf. Carolyn, who was nearest the back, leaned out the open window to feel the spin of tiny dust devils. In the dim light of the taillights, she could see no wheel tracks left upon the sand.

  Faye was riding with her head tipped onto the seat back, eyes shut, face very lean and drawn. Skull-like, thought Carolyn, putting the image away from her in revulsion. Maybe Ophy had found out what was wrong. Agnes had not said a word since rising and seemed disinclined to do so now. She had her rosary in her hands and two hectic patches of color stained her cheeks. Ophy and Jessamine sat together, talking about something technical, as though they were on a tour. Bettiann was nearest Carolyn, her face quiet and empty, hands folded in her lap. Lolly had curled up on a seat, head pillowed on her arms, and was asleep again, like some small animal. She seemed able to sleep at any time, in any place. All she needed was a bushy tail to cover her eyes.

  West and north of them the mountains rose abruptly—not high, a thousand feet perhaps—as they went south and still farther south, then westward around a curved toe of the mountains, crossing other dim rutty roads that wound away to water tanks and windmills, coming at last to a place where the land sloped gently down toward the west. The old man shifted gears smoothly, and they proceeded more slowly, winding among large stones. Though it was night, they moved in the bubble of amber light that brightened the farther they went.

  Carolyn rose and went to the front of the bus, dropping her pack and herself into the empty seat nearest the driver. “What is your name?” she asked.

  “I am Chendi Qowat. Also called Padre Josephus.”

  “Both postmaster and priest?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “No. A messenger and a father. I am father to pigs and goats and chickens and many girl children.”

  “No boy children?”

  “No boy children. We do not need boy children very often.”

  “The girl children are yours?”

  “Yes and no. Mostly, I am father to the chickens.”

  “What does it mean, to be father to chickens?”

  “When they hatch, someone must fetch food to cast before their feet. Who but their father would do this?”

  “Are we going to see our friend, Sophy?”

  “I have heard Sophy was your friend.”

  “Were you the one who brought her food when she was in the desert?”

  “She told you that?”

  “She told her followers someone had brought her food, someone who lived in a school bus.”

  “Perhaps it was I. I do things like that. Bring food. Bring help. Not long ago I brought help to someone you know. Helen, her name is.”

  “Helen! Helen Jagger?”

  “I found her alone on a hillside, hiding under a tree like a rabbit. I took her to a safe place.”

  Carolyn merely stared. “How … how did you know she was there?”

  He peered at her intently. “Didn’t you ask someone to help her? I thought you did.”

  She bit her tongue until she could hold it no longer. “Where are we going?”

  “To a place of sun-warmed stone. To the Sisterhood. To the family place of Sovawanea.”

  “Who is she, Father Josephus?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “She was just … Sophy. Our friend.”

  “Her people may not agree with me, but I think she is still your friend. You are wise to have such a friend.”

  “I’m not sure we’re wise.”

  “It is hard to be wise in the body. Hard to be wise when one is hungry, or tired, or lusting. I know. I was young once, too. How the blood simmers, making a steam around the brain, a mist that fools the senses. How the words of passion crowd up in the throat. How the muscles twitch and dance when one is young.”

  “I’m afraid none of my friends and I are young.”

  “Oh, some of you are very young.” He turned the bus slightly to the north, and she saw they were going downhill into a hidden valley. Now the light was pure gold. There were cottonwoods around them, which meant a stream, but she saw no stream. Then, in a moment, she did see a stream—bubbling water, fountains springing forth from the bare earth, filling rocky hollows from which they spilled to make a brook that flowed beside them, dancing silver skeins of water marking their way. The water was edged in grasses and soon passed into the shade of trees. All around them was bosque, riverine woodland, the green boughs hiding them from the sky. Carolyn fished in her pack for her map.

  “This place is not on any map,” chided the old man. “This is a place one must know before one goes there. One cannot arrive, one can only return.”

  “Then the ones following us can’t find it?”

  “That is true. They may find your car, but they will not find you.”

  “We should have brought the car.”

  “It would not go in. Only this vehicle goes in and out. It was created to go in and out.”

  She set her instant apprehension aside, forced herself to be calm. She was living in a story Luce might have read and told her about. “Some fairy-tale place?” she asked hesitantly. “Some … what? Magical door between the worlds? Some fold in space?”

  He chuckled. “This is not a fairy tale. It is, perhaps, technology of an unfamiliar kind, one that allows a place to exist with an invisible wall around it. People who come to the wall walk around the place, without knowing there is a wall.”

  “Why here? Miles from anything?”

  “It is easier to make the wall when few people approach it. In a city it would be very hard. The disjunction would be noted. Walls would bend inexplicably. Streets would not meet at corners. It could be done … has been done in old cities, I am told, where alleys wind and walls curve. There you could g
o through a door, turn a corner, turn another, wind here, wind there, and be suddenly elsewhere, all the disjunctions hidden by evasive corridors and delusive stairs. Here it is simpler. Who comes? A few cows. A man or two on horseback, hunting the cows. A pig hunting his dinner. A cougar hunting the pig. Who goes over? A few planes, very high. Once in a great while one like last night, a helicopter flying low and slow, looking for someone. What do they see? Mesquite and sand and yucca and more mesquite and more sand. Who will notice that mesquite does not make a straight line? Who would expect it to?”

  “But there are detectors,” she said uncertainly. “Radar? Things like that?”

  “The wall makes no trace on such devices.”

  “And you still say this is not fantasy?”

  “No. Real people here sent for you.”

  “Sent for us?”

  “Sent me for you. In my role as messenger, or as you say, postmaster. You are the post I am delivering.”

  “This place where we’re going … has it always been here?”

  He shook his head. “It has been here for a very long time. Not always. Nothing is always.”

  She went back toward her seat.

  Faye raised her head as Carolyn sat down. “Learning things, schoolmate?”

  “Many things,” she said. “All of them like eating wind pudding.”

  “Yeah,” she said, laying her head back again. “Sophy was always hard to get hold of.”

  The jouncing journey went on only briefly before the bus slowed and stopped at the edge of a glade, a streamside meadow, sheltered under giant cottonwoods with dark evergreens standing behind them. Carolyn had been over the map a dozen times. There was no stream upon it, only dotted blue lines to show where spring melt or summer cloudbursts cut knife-edged arroyos into the dry clay of the desert. There was no wooded place on the map. There was no town on the map, but here was a settlement beneath the trees, small houses, along with several larger structures.

  “Lizard Rock,” said the old man, pointing toward a vast, ramified outcropping that reared itself into the golden light beyond the nearest trees. He went to the side door, opened it, fetched a barrow from a few feet away, unloaded the chicken and pig feed into it, and trudged off with it along the stream.