You're fourteen years old, sitting on the porch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to your bruised face. Your uncle's footsteps rattle the floor and the screen door slams open. "Ramir," he says, in a whisper that's got all the anger of his usual shouting crammed into it. "Inside. Now." You unfold yourself, slowly. He snaps his fingers at you and points into the kitchen. "Now." You make a big show of dragging your feet about it, and keep your face expressionless. He always says he'd go easier on you if you cooperated, but you doubt that, and anyway your pride won't let you try.
Inside he takes the bag of peas from you and throws it back into the chest freezer. "Really?" he says, slamming the chest shut. "Really, Ramir, out in public?"
You don't answer. You don't look at him. This pisses him off almost as bad as if you did.
"Do you know how that looks? Some mopey kid sitting out on the porch looking pathetic, whatever, must be Thursday. God knows this town puts up with more of your teenage drama than it has to. Some mopey kid on the porch looking pathetic and icing down his face, though, what's that look like? Huh? You want people to think I hit you? You want to make me look bad? Ramir."
Your skin is crawling. "Stop saying my name so much."
"You look me in the eye, Ramir. And tell me this: have I ever raised a hand to you?"
You really did do this to yourself. You really did fall off your bike in the gully. Still, it might've been nice if someone asked, and you told them that, and they didn't believe you. "No," you say. "Never."
"I said look me in the eye." You do, finally. He takes a deep breath, like he's tired. Like this is some emotional rollercoaster you sent him on. "I didn't have to take you in at all, do you realize? I was only doing a favor for your dad. Who, by the way, is sending less and less money every quarter - it's barely even enough to cover your board now. Do you get that, Ramir? Even he won't go as far out of his way for you as I have. And what thanks do I get?"
He has you backed into the corner by the fridge. He won't let you leave until you say "thank you." What you said was true: he's never hurt you, physically, not one time - so you're not sure what would happen if you tried to force your way past. You spend a long time weighing your options, but ultimately, you're too chicken.
You thank him. He grounds you for two weeks and sells your bike.
...But that's in the past. You're a grown-ass man, you make your own way now. You're standing at the end of your old street in Bartow, chain-smoking like you haven't felt the need to do in months, and your stomach's pretty unhappy with you, but you can leave.
And you will. The caravan stop here isn't even a full day. You'll be leaving in four hours and you didn't have to come down this way in the first place. You don't know why you always do.
That willow tree across the way looked so big when you were a kid. You left and came back, and saw that it was small; you've left and come back a bunch more times and now it's tiny and shriveled and probably dead. Trees like that need a lot of water. Doesn't rain much in Bartow, and if no one cared enough to keep babying the thing through one more winter -
You grab a twig and bend, and it gives a dry crack that startles you, that you're sure is audible all down the block. And it snaps off clean. No green in it anywhere.
You shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't be here. But why have the townspeople left it standing, a scraggly corpse they can see from the window when they get their lattes? Who doomed this thing to die in your neighborhood and why didn't they get out here with a chainsaw and deal with their mistake?
You walk away. The willow switch trailing from your hand draws a squiggly line across the surface of the dirt road, like a snake.
You keep walking, past where you used to live. You draw more snakes.
Absently you go back and draw forked tongues on them, to make it more obvious what they are. You have fond memories of snakes, and you're leaving in four hours. So that's two things you've got going for you. You sit in a tire swing overlooking the now-vacant lot all your worst memories roost in. You scratch more lines into the ground.
At some point Rhea approaches. With a mid-sized brown mutt at her heels. Sure, fine, whatever, she makes friends wherever she goes, apparently, why not a dog? Long as it doesn't jump on you, who cares.
She's smiling warmly when she first walks up, but when she looks at you closer she swaps that expression for something more serious. "Ramir. How are you?"
You snap the twig in half in your hand. It's louder this time. "Oh, just dandy," you drawl. "Absolutely swell." Rhea's dog looks excited. Dumb animal. You throw both halves of the stick aside and he runs after them. "How's the store?"
She chews on her lip, searching for an objective assessment. At length she says, "Getting there. We're not in the clear yet, but there's a few people out east I want to track down - if I get a good haul this month -"
You interrupt, "If it were up to me, I'd drop this place off the route yesterday." She frowns. "Nothing against you, but look around." You spread your arms to take in the whole dusty run-down street. "What's worth saving here? All the time and effort it'd take, you could buy a block of townhouses in Rimina. And Rimina's already there."
She draws in a breath. There's a flash of anger in her eyes, and if she were her mom, you might be inclined to duck and cover. But she waits a beat, and then says in a measured tone, "If that's how you feel, why do you even ask?"
The dog comes galloping back, his pawprints breaking the back of one of your snake drawings, and drops one of the two sticks at your feet. You don't feel like throwing it again. "Go get the other one, then," you say, but he stares up at you with a hopeful expression, wagging his tail.
Rhea's looking at the shapes in the dirt. "Snakes?"
"I just like 'em," you say, leaning away from the dog still lobbying hard for your attention. The boughs overhead creak as your weight shifts. "They're cool as hell, okay?"
They're often despised and misunderstood, but snakes are only trying to live their lives, same as anyone. You understood this from a young age. You found a shed skin once, wedged under a rock, almost intact, and you thought, That's how to do it. Scrape off all the stuff you don't need anymore, and get out.
Rhea is still watching you. "Look," you say, "no hard feelings, it is what it is, but not everyone had the idyllic Bartow childhood you did."
She says, simply, "I'm sorry to hear that." She whistles, and the dog finally leaves you, to give the stick to her instead. She throws it. He runs off yipping. She says, "If you ever want to talk about it..."
Thing is, you're pretty sure she could get it out of you. She listens. She picks up what you're putting down. She's easy to talk to and she's not judgy. Given time, you're pretty sure she'd make you feel at ease enough to spill the whole sorry tale.
You say, "Not likely, but thanks. Isn't it about time we hit the road?"
"There's still time."
"Fine. Samuel grilling anything good today?"
You have lunch with the caravan, and you and Rhea don't ask each other any difficult questions. And then you get to leave for another month.
Rhea picked up a ukulele somewhere on her travels, and some nights when everyone circles the trucks she gets it out to practice. It's a much brighter, plinkier sound than her mother's old guitar. But to have somebody playing something again, however clumsily, feels like something's gone right in the world.
"Hey Ramir," she says one evening, "name that tune," and plinks her way through a set of chords that -
As soon as you place it, you crack up. You finish the chorus: "...And we won't be seeing him anymore." It's Blood Thinner. That song you argued about on her first trip.
"Murder ballads are kind of silly on a uke," she says, grinning ruefully. "It's got such a cheerful tone."
"So?" you say. "Still fits. Maybe you're just that happy the guy's dead. 'I killed the thing that was keeping me down, let me take a victory lap here,' type of energy."
She laughs, although - you're not sure she gets it.
Still. Nice to have a friend on the road, even if you're not riding with her this time. You like your personal space too much to share the cab with her and the dog.
You have a run of bad luck in Clifton and have to ask her to spot you some cash. "And this didn't happen," you tell her, "and Nadine will never find out."
"Relax," she says. "I know you're good for it. Although..." Her expression turns mock-calculating. "I've done you a lot of favors since I joined the caravan. I'm making a note to ask you for something someday."
You get mock-indignant. "What? When you get the benefit of all my worldly wisdom for free? When I bought you pretzels?" You discreetly thumb through the bills she gave you and tuck them into your inside pocket. "Okay, I gotta go settle up. If I'm not back in half an hour, maybe pull the fire alarm or something."
This is Rhea's - what, third run? Or technically her second, since on her first outing you dragged her off course (not sorry). But you'd never know it to look at her. In Aldhurst and Rimina, she's chatting up some of the prickliest customers on the route, no trouble. You're sleeping a lot, during the day - the railroad grind and the permanent murky glow of Anka wore you out more than you knew - but you'll crack an eye open from time to time, from your spot in Helena's truck, and you'll seee Rhea loading up infinite barrels of pickled cabbage and hot peppers, walking out of this or that business with a smile and a wave, shaking hands, making deals. She drinks tea with Nadine, she helps inspect everybody's tires. She's everywhere, and ever so helpful, and endlessly competent. Nauseating.
The pickles are the most revolting part. Once, about seventeen years ago, Bartow lost electricity for four months. Not even [
] could move enough mountains to restore power any faster. In that time everyone got real well acquainted with shelf-stable foodstuffs. Rhea might not be old enough to remember, but you hit your lifetime quota on sauerkraut at age seven, thanks very much.
You make sure to be awake for Old Marae. One, fishermen wager their lives every day against the sea - so if you get a game going and you can put up with the smell of lamprey, the betting is always hot. Two, the ocean's full of trash, and some of that trash is electronics. You know some of the divers. You can pick stuff up for a song, have it refurbed in Anka, and then charge whatever the hell you want.
Three, Rhea is her mother's daughter, wearing her mother's keepsake, walking straight into Rilker territory. Yeah, she's handled herself well so far, but she's not as safe, and people aren't as nice, as she seems to believe. You're not much use in a straight-up fight, but you can at least throw a rock and haul her out in the chaos. You know where to go to avoid the surveillance cameras, and a kid in the Floating District taught you a trick for spotting unmarked patrol boats. You're prepared for the worst. If she goes in there as a friendly, accommodating, aw-shucks Bartow gal...
She doesn't. Of course she doesn't. You should've known. "Thunder," she says, "heel," and even her dog walks in with this brisk take-no-prisoners air. Her body language has changed - she's taking up more space, not in a threatening way, but "yeah, I'm here, I have every right to be, what about it?" And off she goes into Old Marae.
The caravan is parked in the lot under the guard station. Nadine sits in her cab filling out the paperwork to order replacement truck parts from the Rilker factory offshore. There's always something - Soterios hit a pothole at a weird angle coming out of Bukam Boro, and his sway bar snapped down the center, in a way no one in the caravan had ever seen before. There's always something, and in Old Marae, there are always eight forms to fill out about it. You knock on her window and she scowls at you. The sky is dark green and it's pissing rain and somehow she's still wearing sunglasses. She cranks the window down. "Make it quick."
"Rhea's stuff. Anyone keeping an eye on it?" The way [] made enemies, in Rhea's position you'd expect to have your cargo tossed the second you left it unattended. Even odds whether the guards turn a blind eye to robbers or come down and start confiscating stuff themselves. She could've left her dog, or asked one of the others to watch out, but she didn't wait.
"We worked that out among ourselves, yes. If you missed it, I assume you were either asleep or out losing at cards."
If she thinks that's all you do, at least it means she doesn't know about your extracurriculars. Can't get offended at that. You sigh. "She's fitting right in, huh?"
Nadine looks impatient. "What's your interest in her?"
Okay, that does offend you. "It was a rhetorical question. What's yours? What are you, her grandma?" You step away from her truck. "Forget we had this talk."
She's already cranking the window shut again. "Gladly."
So Rhea doesn't get robbed. So her caravan buddies are all looking out for her, how nice. Later you see her coming back from the quayside market with a crate of salted fish on a hand truck, so clearly, she's figured out how to sweet-talk the locals, too. If you ever thought she needed your help, you were kidding yourself.
But back on the road again, back inland to Tosende Canals, she's still the woman who drove you to Anka. Cheerful, unassuming, a little snarky, a little green. It's like she's slipping a mask on and off. Or trading it for another one.
After the Canals, it's on to Anka again, from the east this time. Rhea says, "You know, my contacts in Anka spoke really highly of you. The railroad committee are big fans."
Mostly what you get out of this is how easily she talks about having contacts. Oh yeah, she's got people. Any doors that won't open to her perfect diplomacy will open for her mom's locket. She's just built different.
Anka is... fine. It's fine. The conditions you got sick of last time still prevail, but it's not the worst place in the world.
You dine out on your railway credentials, once, but people say so many nice things about you that you kinda want to crawl off and die. And then somebody - not one of the committee members you've dealt with, they at least would know better - asks about your background.
You're not the most sober that anyone has ever been. You say, "I was born in a truck. My mother was a derecho and my father was the smell of asphalt. What's it to you? The - goddamn - gods of trade sent me here to straighten you idiots out. Gift horse. However the saying goes. I dunno, get off me."
Crazy part is, you still get invitations for the next night. You tell 'em you're busy.
And then, too soon, the caravan's preparing to move out. Complete the circuit. And however tired you are of hearing some guy wailing on a trumpet at odd hours of the night - you can't face Bartow right now. You just can't.
"I'll take the train down next week," you say. "Meet up with you guys in Bukam Boro."
Nadine says, "You do whatever you want, Ramir. My responsibility is my drivers."
"Yeah." You turn up the collar of your jacket and hunch down in it. It's gonna rain again. Wind gusts down the alleyways. "So if any of the drivers ask about me, you can tell them."
The train's pretty nice. You saw pieces of it fabricated, but this is your first time in one of the completed cars. And like you predicted, not a lot of passengers southbound - you get a car to yourself, almost, until an old lady boards at the last second with an armload of potted orchids. She sprawls her plants out over a whole row of seats and then starts knitting and ignores you. So you ignore her, too.
Lots more legroom than a truck. You can even get up and pace up and down the aisle, timing your steps with the rattle and sway. You feel self-conscious about doing it, though, so you only pace in the direction that orchid lady isn't looking. When you do feel like sitting down, the seats are upholstered in real recycled leather and they haven't already had all the stuffing beaten out of them by generations of people's bony asses.
The cafe car is stocked with favorite caravaneer snacks, because those were the names you knew to drop. It all works out, anyway, because the panels along the spine of the train give it just enough solar power to run the engine and ventilation - they don't have the juice to actually reheat anything. Maybe someday.
You have a big paper sack of sweet potato straws and you don't have to talk to anyone or worry about where you're going. You're just gonna end up there. Your work was done when you climbed aboard.
The sky gets clearer as you go south. The train clicks and swings past big golden fields, the rows spaced out for human workers and not the farm bots of the north. Out the other window there's a road, and past the road another field. Sometimes you see a solitary truck driving along, and the train outpaces it in a blink, in a heartbeat. Sometimes you see deer. The train's supposed to have seat lighting you can turn on and off, but it doesn't work yet. So at night there's only the moon and stars and the beacon on the front of the engine car, and the stripes of fluorescent paint to guide people along the aisles. You pull your sleeping bag over you and rest your head against the window and listen to the train. You can feel it vibrating in your teeth. Awake at midnight, your breath fogging up the glass, you get the weird conviction that another few days of this would fix you.
You did good work, huh? Making this possible.
You had no input on the stations, though. And man alive, is the southern terminus ugly.
The windows of Bukam Boro B&B rattle when a train arrives or leaves. But there's no train scheduled right now. And the rattling doesn't stop.
The ground bucks under you. The clock jumps off the wall and smashes to pieces on the wood floor. You fling yourself out of bed and down the fire escape.