] died, but, man... Dying in friggin' Bartow. You can imagine worse things, but it takes some effort.
The road grinds people down into different shapes. The early mornings, the late nights, the hours of boredom punctuated by random near-death experiences; the loading and unloading, packing and repacking, trying to jigsaw-puzzle more merchandise into the truck bed; all the chitter-chatter and wheeling and dealing just to maintain the network you've already got, much less winning over new contacts; rolling into town and finding out there's a water ration and no way all twenty of you get to use the showers, here's a sponge, make do, and tonight you'll be sleeping in the cab you share with another person who was handed a sponge and told to make do. Anyone who says they don't get tired is a liar. But people get tired different - Sebas is a crier, for one. Lilja gets sarcastic. Even Nadine, who's been doing this forever, has her tells. She's not easy to read at the best of times, but after a grueling circuit she gets sanded down perfectly smooth - you can't talk to her, she's not giving you anything.
You guess this is why she deputized you to talk to Sebas, that time in Clifton. He was wheeling barrels of pecans to the staging area on a little hand cart and all the while gushing out of his eyes, and she clucked her tongue and muttered "He's gonna spill something." You told him to go sit down and have a lemonade and leave this to the pros. You don't get tired.
Also, by "the pros," you mean Johann.
That ended up being Sebas's last go-round with the caravan. He couldn't hack it, and went home. You don't miss all the sniffling, that's for sure.
But it was someone else's last run, too.
Weird enough that [] died, but, man... Dying in friggin' Bartow. You can imagine worse things, but it takes some effort.
You and she weren't close or anything. You admired her, from a distance. She had the soul of a pirate. That first caravan circuit after she was gone, you kept miscounting the number of trucks, and at night sometimes you'd lie awake waiting to hear her get the guitar out like she used to. You'll never hear her play again, and you'll never get to ask what she saw in that dusty junkheap of a town. On the nights when it hit you, you'd go for a walk and have a smoke about it, and console yourself with the knowledge you would never have to see your old street again.
So what's Nadine do, the next month, but take the caravan back to Bartow? You could've sworn, with [] gone, she'd have no reason to keep pissing the Rilker family off like that, but here you all are, rolling into town like nothing's changed.
And there's []'s truck waiting to join you, like nothing's changed.
She had a daughter, couplathree years younger than you. So now the daughter has the truck. Okay. So maybe the daughter has the sense to realize that place is poison.
You keep your distance, first leg of the trip, up to Pachenco. You don't know what you're gonna do if she recognizes you. 'Cause if she recognizes you, she'll recognize who you used to be when you lived there. You're a man of the road now - plus, you just turned twenty-five, nice convenient milestone, so you deserve a clean slate on whatever dumb angsty stuff came before. Didn't count.
You're curious about her, though. She looks a lot like her mom, but she's quieter. Drives all careful. Makes sense, for a complete greenhorn, but - why is she a greenhorn? Didn't [] tell her anything?
Nobody ever showed you the ropes out here, but you had no reason to expect that. She could've expected help, and isn't getting any, and that annoys you, even if you never hear her complain.
You still haven't made up your mind to approach her by the time you're in Clifton. The second afternoon in town, when you're not expecting it, she approaches you.
"Aren't you Ramir?"
Busted.
Wondering how much she remembers, you say, "Aren't you Rhea?"
She smiles. "That's me."
You're sitting on the hood of Maciej's truck, still digesting lunch. It was a good lunch, some kinda spicy bean situation with corn chips, so you feel kindly disposed toward this youngster looking up at you from the loading dock.
"I've been making the rounds trying to meet the whole caravan," she says. She holds her hand up toward you, but the angle's weird so you have to scoot closer to her on the hood to reach down and shake it. It's not super dignified. But the two of you shake hands, and her eyes crease the way you remember her mom's doing. "But I know I've seen you before. You grew up on Junction Street, right? Catty-corner from the -"
"From the coffeeshop, yeah." If she goes on in this vein all your kind feelings toward her are gonna dry up and blow away. "It was a long time ago." You clear your throat. "Anyone talk to you about our next stop?"
"Bukam Boro?" she says.
"Yeah. It's gonna look real familiar, trust me. One of those one-stoplight towns, even back in the gasoline days. Now they don't even need the one. But Nadine just has to stop every time and chat with this weird hippie chick who..." You think back sourly on the time Matilde the matcha woman tried to badger you into her stupid fortune-telling ceremony. You refused, and you weren't polite about it. But that's on her for being pushy. Ever since, she's looked at you with pity and disdain, and it really grinds your gears to be getting that look from a failed entrepreneur out in Nowheresville. "Nah," you say, "I won't spoil the surprise."
"Oh, dear," she says, frowning, but her eyes look amused.
"The other thing you gotta watch for is, the road surface out that way is terrible." You lean back on your hands. Honestly, you're kinda getting into this role, dispensing your wisdom to the fledgling. She's playing her part well, too - she listens attentively, even gets her map out to follow along. At some point you find you've hopped down off the hood and waved for her to spread her map out on the sun-warmed surface. You watch over her shoulder while she traces out the route with a finger, and applies shreds of sticky note to points of interest, and under your advice she adds a couple more.
She has the same exact handwriting as [].
You don't notice when Maciej comes back. You don't notice when he climbs back into the cab. He leans hard on the truck's horn, and you and Rhea both jump about a foot in the air. Maciej smiles at you through the windshield and waves like "my lunch break's over, go make trouble somewhere else."
Rhea folds up her map and flashes you a rueful grin, still a little shaky after the blast of noise. "Thanks, Ramir. Talk soon."
You've got business of your own to conduct, so you don't see Rhea the next day. Mostly your business is blackjack, plus you asked a guy to look into some stuff for you, and conveniently enough you can follow up with him at Natsumi's Blackjack Parlor. You stroll back to the Clifton roadhouse about three in the morning, no richer and no poorer - better than you usually do at Natsumi's - but with a couple new ideas burning in your brain.
In the parking lot, the cabin light is on in []'s truck.
You stroll over to see what's what. Rhea is rummaging in the glove box. You say, "Got a problem?"
She starts. "Oh! It's just you. Well - I can't tell if there's a problem. Nadine says we're rolling out tomorrow."
You look at your watch. "Today?"
Her mouth twists. "Today. Great. I have to make sure I'm on track - picking up enough inventory -" She's taken a small ledger out of the glove compartment, and she waves it at you, looking frazzled. "If I can't make the whole circuit this time, I have to be pretty aggressive. The store..."
Ah. So that's what her deal is. "Y'know, for most people, caravan driving is a full-time job itself. Trying to run the store on top of that is a little much."
"My mom -"
"Yeah, I knew your mom. There's not a lot of people who could do what she did."
Her gaze snaps indignantly up to yours. "Well, maybe I'm one of them."
You turn away. "There's no helping some people," you say to the empty air, and head for the roadhouse door. You're not driving, so you at least can take catnaps in the truck after you all roll out. But no sense in not using a bed for as long as it's available.
"Ramir," Rhea calls out, and you stop. After a pause, she says, "Is it me, or are the stars weird here?"
You look up. "Fewer of 'em," you conclude. You've mostly stopped noticing this. The mountains to the north take a huge bite out of the sky. Days are cooler and nights are blacker in their shadow. Your first trip with the caravan, even younger than she is now, you couldn't get over it - felt claustrophobic here, couldn't get your shoulders down from around your ears. "Bartow's flatter and it has less light pollution. G'night." And she doesn't stop you a second time.
But in the morning, some of your ideas of last night have crystallized. Rhea looks at you blearily as you climb into her truck and say, "Got a proposition for you."
Three hours later the two of you are northbound. You expected this to be a harder sell. Rhea obeyed Nadine without question the first week out of Bartow, and watching from a distance, you're pretty sure she got snowed by that old hag in Pachenco, bowing to her air of authority or maybe the unlimited stream of canapes. So you had reason to worry she'd be more of a rule follower - go along quietly in the channels that old folks have carved for you, be respectful, that kinda crap. But the caravan continues on the road to Bukam Boro, and Rhea casually peels off onto the overpass and doesn't look back.
"Attagirl!"
She changes gears to get up the hill. "Don't patronize me. And stay awake – if we're doing this, I need you to help navigate."
You catch sight of yourself in the rear-view: you're grinning like a maniac. You tone it down a little. "Sure thing," you say, and once she's merged onto the Anka road and has a hand free you slap a bottle of cold brew into her palm. You're a useful guy to have riding shotgun, at least when it suits you.
They say there used to be thousands of trucks on this road every day. As far back as you're aware, only the middle two lanes have been usable. You can't seriously imagine a world where they needed all eight.
"There's a good rest stop in another seventy miles," you tell her. "There are a bunch along this road, but they're kinda far apart. I think they spaced them out based on how fast a gas engine went in the old days. Our modern stuff's a lot slower."
Rhea absently pats the dashboard, like she's trying to reassure her truck after hearing you say such mean things about it. "Seventy miles I can do," she says. "I can take a walk and put the solar panels out for an hour or two." Seems reasonable. You nod. She says, "In the meantime, entertain me. You said you had stories?"
"Oh, yeah. Tons."
"Now, when you say that..." She doesn't take her eyes off the road, but she tilts her head to one side, inquisitive. "Do you mean stories about the road, or do you mean talking trash about people back home?"
That same idiot grin is trying to steal over your face again. This is nice, isn't it? Road tripping. A couple of escaped Bartowers against the world. "Pick your poison."
Things you learn about Rhea on the way to Anka: she's a little naive, but she's pretty smart. She's also, just, hopelessly cool. She drives stick like it's second nature, she's got more muscle power than you'd expect, and she isn't afraid of jack squat. She can't play any instruments, but she's got a real set of pipes on her. Musically, at least, her mom was the complete opposite.
One evening she's singing a wordless song to herself and you almost bust a gut laughing, because – this one is supposed to have words, about poisoning your husband and shacking up with the woman next door. She has no clue. She's just singing "ba dum ba da da" all sweet and sentimental, and getting annoyed at your increasing hilarity. You explain yourself and she doesn't believe you.
You take the issue to a jury of your peers: a small party of southbound travelers is already at that night's campsite. "Hey," you say to them, "do me a favor, name this tune for my friend here?" and hum the first few bars.
The group reaches no consensus on what the song's called. Regional variation. But they definitely agree it involves warfarin. A middle-aged lady and her husband actually sing the whole thing – must be pretty secure in their marriage, huh? Or maybe they don't keep rat poison in their house so she won't be tempted. Maybe their neighbors aren't hot enough. You could riff on this all night.
Rhea thanks them, unusually curt, and goes back to her truck.
Alarmed, you follow her. She is your ride, after all. She says, "Mom played that song sometimes. I didn't want to know what it was about. I didn't need to know."
[] has only been dead two months and change. You feel like a complete bastard. "Sorry," you say. She nods in acknowledgment. "But maybe, like... Now you know something new about her. Playing that song for a little kid – she had a weird sense of humor. That's something."
After a long time she says, "I guess." The distant campfire behind you is reflected in her eyes. She says, "I have to keep her store running. Nadine's giving me a five-month trial period – if I can't satisfy her, they're killing the Bartow route. That'll finish the store for sure. Probably all of Bartow. And everything I have left of Mom's."
Your mind skitters off in two directions at once. One: poor kid. Two: If the stakes are that high, and Rhea needs Nadine's goodwill that bad... She may have shot herself in the foot here, ditching the caravan. She can rejoin them in Aldhurst, but Nadine's gonna be pissed.
...Which, thinking fast, is actually another win for you. You get a lift to Anka, and you get Bartow dropped? Lucky day. Quick, write down some lottery numbers.
You don't know how bad you should feel about this. It's not like it'd accomplish anything if you did.
Rhea doesn't want to talk to you any more tonight. You head downwind, away from the truck and the campsite both, to find a nice clearing to look at the sky. You fumble for your lighter and a crumpled pack of smokes. A ways away you hear a guitar playing, or maybe you don't.
Rhea forgives you for the murder ballad business. You cut her some slack for taking it so weird. Even setting aside her mom being dead, she's never been this far away from home for this long. You can imagine that a person, or at least a person who doesn't totally and unequivocally hate their home, might get a little messed up about it. Being an accomplished hater yourself, you can't relate, but that's what you imagine.
Just to make sure everything's good between the two of you - you don't want your driver pissed off at you, it's basic self-preservation - for the next night's stop you give her directions to someplace cool.
These places used to be called "malls." Sorta like what they have in Pachenco, and you've heard rumors that one still exists on the first couple floors of Rilker Towers - but basically a big ol' shopping district with a roof on it. They turned this one into apartments, but they left all the shop signs up. Used to have a glass elevator, too, but no one's been able to move it in a while, so now it's only a tiny glass room.
When you pull in, one of the first signs you see says PRETZELS. This guy Eduardo thought it'd be funny to set up in there and just kinda resume selling pretzels. Has this whole shtick about how it's a family business he inherited from his aunt - none of it's true, but he does a good pretzel. Ask nice, and he'll cut one crossways and make it a sandwich. You foot the bill, and you and Rhea eat your pretzel sandwiches in a big field behind the mall. In places, crumbling slabs of white-striped tarmac can be seen through the grass.
She says, "Should be two more days to Anka, if the weather holds. I don't like those clouds - the battery isn't recharging as fast as I want."
"Yeah, wait 'til you try this run in the winter. You have to drive it at a crawl." It occurs to you that you haven't had a conversation about how long this drive will take - she must've worked it out herself, from the maps and her average speed. And her math matches your experience. Yeah, it's about two days from here. You start thinking, Hey, this kid'll do okay.
"The caravan makes the same arrival schedule in all seasons," she says, frowning. "Wonder how they compensate for that."
"Practice," you say. "And they build a little slop into the timing." Sandwich done, you wipe mustard off your hands and look around for wherever they're composting napkins out here. "And they're still late more often than you think."
She says wistfully, "I can count on my fingers the number of times Mom was home late."
Travel wears people out - maybe this is how it wears on her. You could swear she was less of a downer when you first left Clifton.
Most people in the caravan would say being a downer is your job. But weirdly, you haven't felt like it, this run.
You like Rhea. You wish her the best. You have your doubts she's really taking your advice to heart, but there's only so much a guy can do. You reach Anka on good terms; she puts the truck in park; you say without fanfare "Here's my stop" and jump down onto the concrete.
She leans out the door to ask you, "How do you feel about hugs? Are you a hugger?"
Which is just disgusting. It's the Bartow in her coming out. If she'd gone for it, you would have let her, but she had to go and ask. Adjusting the straps of your backpack, you scoff, "Have you met me?" You take a couple steps back, point her attention to a signboard overhead. "Road signage is actually pretty good in the city. Number 6 Southeast will get you to Aldhurst when you're done here. Watch for potholes."
She looks lost.
Patiently, you say, "You can buy a lot of old tech here. Stuff the yokels have never seen before. It'll be good for your shop." This may or may not be true. The main market for your little side hustle is along the coast, where you get a lot more for nostalgic gizmos than your average Bartower can fork over. But she's welcome to try. Maybe it works, maybe her shop goes under, won't cost you any sleep. "I gotta go see a man about a railroad. Thanks. Take care of yourself."
Anka smells like wet cement and hot metal, and sizzles with steam where the two meet. The gray blur of the sky is reflected in hundreds of plate-glass windows. Pigeons everywhere - they look like the same type as in Bartow, only bigger, but what would you know about that, you're not a birdologist.
You swore an oath to yourself in your teens, you'll die before you put down roots anywhere. But you like Anka just fine. And right now, it's the place to be.
For actually laying the rail, there's no shortage of labor available, plus a whole army of jailbroken Rilker bots. They can knock the thing out in two-three weeks, all they need is someone to ferry them down to the work site. There are lots of abandoned rails they can tie into across the plains, they can take their pick, it's all about ease of access. This line has to be laid down parallel to a known road, and if you know anything, you know roads.
"You want a straight shot across the interior," you tell the railroad planning committee. The number of favors you had to cash in to get here, you expected it to be more formal than a bunch of thirtysomethings and a handful of androids huddled over a bunch of maps in a garage. The coffee isn't even good. Then again, word on the street is the Commission voted the repairs down eight or nine times, and when they couldn't block it anymore they settled for giving it an impossible timeline and zero budget. You go on: "I don't need to tell you the Rilkers will fight it if you go too far east. But out west in the sticks and you'll be too far from help if something goes wrong. Not to mention, rebuild all the stations you want, there won't be anyone to pick up."
"We were looking at the old Aldhurst line," says this butch woman with jade-green cornrows. "Popular destination, lot of festivals."
"Yeah," you say, flipping to a topographic map, "but look at the elevation." You point out the gradient from the western plains down to the lowlands, before it rises again toward Rimina. "That road washes out all the time. Any rain you get here rolls right down it." You point to Aldhurst itself. "And if the sea level comes up any higher, the track gets eaten from the other direction. You could probably do some kinda elevated railbed like they've got in Bukam Boro, but you'd be building it from scratch."
"One of our other lead proposals," says a guy in a pink vest, leaning in to drop a new map on top of all the others on the table. Nice, nice, they're taking you seriously, or they wouldn't care about your buy-in.
And it's a good thing they do. This proposal is nonsense. Guy has a line traced down alongside a road that hasn't been passable in four years. Eight years, for anybody who wasn't [].
"That won't cut it," you say. "Listen." And listen they do. You're a young guy, you travel around, you keep your eyes open. You understand conditions on the ground. You're the best intel they've got.
You want to get paid, too, but the recognition is a nice start.
Couple days of debate and they finalize plans to reopen the rail line to, irony of ironies... Bukam Boro. Man, that place sucks. It was partly on your advice they did it, and you can admit the logic is sound. But you suspect the outbound trains won't be selling many tickets.
Well, people who are used to the city might be more jaded about it than you are. Maybe they see cracks you don't, and they're ready to trade for something else. You're used to being King Cynic of Mount Ennui over here, but - Anka hasn't gotten old for you yet. There's still a lot to do.
You take a couple of the planning committee nerds out to a bar and play a billion rounds of darts and say, "Hey. It's passenger rail, right? People get hungry. What's your plan for concessions?"
They hadn't gotten that far yet. That's okay. You have.