Okay, so here's how you're going to handle the new face of Bartow: you're not looking at it. Easy. You never had to go kick around your old haunts when you came into town, no one made you, the only explanation is you're an idiot who loves pain. Well, maybe you're a new man since the earthquake. You've outgrown all kinds of vices now, hooray for you.
Let's not kid ourselves, you'd be smoking like a furnace if there was smoking to be had.
Instead you keep busy. You unload crates, check manifests, pressurize tires, talk to Nadine about road conditions and what might need to be done differently this go-round. Rohit stands at her elbow taking notes, which is a weird vibe, but sure. You do all this and you don't leave the parking lot and you keep your back to the ruins of the town that spat you out.
There was a whole crop of new potholes on the way in. Fallen trees nobody'd cleaned up yet. A tractor abandoned on its side in a field, a grain silo crumpled like wet cardboard. Market Street got itself a fancy new 4% incline. That much you couldn't avoid noticing. That much gave you heartburn. You shut your eyes.
Hinges squeak, off behind you, and a dog barks. You hear snatches of voices - Rhea and Elias. You go find something else to inspect.
But you've been spotted. "Ramir!" Rhea jogs over and catches hold of your elbow. "Hey, before we go, you should check this out. We got the roof back on the coffeeshop!"
You pull free. "Congrats." Uneven wear patterns on Soterios's treads. He should rotate his tires soon - there's a garage the caravan can use in Pachenco. Would've been better to spot this back north, but people had a lot on their minds.
You have nothing on your mind now. You're keeping it as empty as you can.
"C'mon," Rhea says, "it'll only take five minutes. Your old neighborhood is bouncing back, it's really great to see how everyone -"
"Pass."
"O...kay." She has no business sounding so surprised. You thought she paid better attention than that. "Well, if you won't look for yourself - it was kind of a big achievement for me."
You don't look back. You move on to the next truck. You've already looked at it, but Rhea can't know that. "I said 'congrats.' What else do you want?"
She's stopped following you. Her footsteps go still in the gravel. "Do you not care?"
"Not one bit."
"All right." You hear a slapping sound. You remember this gesture [
] used to make when she was really in a mood, shrugging hugely and throwing her arms out and letting them drop, to smack audibly against her legs. You aren't looking at Rhea, but you guess she's done the same. They're too much alike. She says, "All right, forget you, then."
Heading out of town you get a glimpse of the shiny new corrugated roof of the cafe, but you try to block it from memory.
Pachenco, normal. Clifton, normal. Bukam Boro, god, you spent a century here last month, you'd rather not dwell on it.
And then a train comes in.
You look around for Rhea, wanting to point it out to her and say, That's what I'm talking about, that's the future, that's the one worthwhile thing I was ever part of.
Then you remember.
She's probably still waiting for you to apologize. Not to be dramatic or anything, but, y'know... Death first.
Aldhurst is full of refugees from the Rilker company towns. The first evening Rhea gets her uke out and goes into their camp to talk to people. It turns into some kind of community meeting and then some kind of dance party-jam session, she's learning all their songs, everyone's lightening up a bit.
Nadine's scowling down at the fire pits and the ruckus from on top of her truck, on the hill where you're all parked.
She hasn't invited you, but you climb up next to her. "City council isn't going to like this."
"I know it. 'Encouraging vagrancy,' section 119 of their criminal code."
The two of you sit there and watch Rhea work her magic. You say, "City council's a racist-dickhead convention."
Nadine says, "I know that, too."
"Is she gonna get us banned?"
Nadine sighs. "You do realize, this is what it was always like driving with her mother. And I was hoping for a change of pace, the more fool me. I'm getting old."
Business in Aldhurst goes on as normal, the next three days. No one mentions Rhea's visit to the camp, least of all Rhea.
Well, not that she's mentioning much to you.
The caravan straggled into Rimina twelve hours behind schedule, and you're tired. Dog-tired. Bone-tired. Trucks kept getting stuck in the mud, and your arms and back hurt from helping push tires free. Your legs hurt from squatting down to lay boards across the muck for people to drive over, pick the boards back up when everyone's crossed, move ahead a hundred yards and do it again. You're sweaty and mosquito-bitten and pissed off that no one thanked you for contributing, but you'd also get pissed off if they did. Stupid caravan. Stupid... banding together in the face of crisis. You're sitting in the shade of a big maple tree, sucking down water from your canteen and keeping an eye on the line for the truck stop showers, and you hate everything.
It's wet and green here, and when the wind blows from the east, you smell brine. You're already past the equinox, and at the higher elevations you passed through earlier, stuff was already turning red-brown and drying up. It's still summer here. It might be summer forever.
The muggy air, the stupid white stucco. Mud. Gnats. Goats. Old people. You've joked about moving to Rimina, but who in their right mind would ever? Everything about this place is wrong.
Rhea's stupid dog lollops over and whuffs at you and lays his stupid square head down on your leg. You grumble, "What do you want, mutt. Where's your boss." When he doesn't react you start flipping his ears back and forth with one hand, trying to annoy him into leaving. But he seems to like it. It's the most affection he's ever gotten from you.
This place is wrong. But what does your head in is, if you close your eyes and listen as evening settles in... The cricket choir, distant buzz of cicadas, people talking to each other from their porches, clink of ice in their drinks. It's not the same in any way that matters, but sometimes it sounds a lot like...
(Oh, just say it, you big sap. You pathetic mopey bastard. Just admit it to yourself.)
Home.
Bartow will never be what it was. It was never what you needed it to be. Those darkening summer nights, the beauty and the ache, that was an illusion and it still is. There's no going back to fix anything.
Masha, on your old street. Her garden was her pride and joy, and one time when you were little, as punishment for some screw-up, you were made to spend the weekend helping her. She had kid-sized tools, but they hadn't been used in a while, and she didn't check their condition, only told you where to find the shovel. You didn't like the feel of gloves. So you got all ten fingers full of fiberglass splinters, and they hurt like hell, and for months afterward you'd get twinges in your hands and wonder if you'd ever really gotten rid of them all.
You know now that you never did. Something's still stuck in you, too deep to cut out.
Thunder licks your hand. You dry your eyes on your sleeve before anyone sees you. You're tired, is all. And angry.
There's a permanent protest set up around the foot of Rilker Towers. Rhea disappears into Old Marae and once again hasn't thought to have her stuff guarded. You take your turn watching it; even if you're still not talking, you won't let a fellow Bartower down.
No way you'd be able to get to your usual e-waste hookup in this mess, anyway. So what else were you gonna do.
And it's during your watch that she comes back, weaving a little, her fingers knotted in the fur of Thunder's shoulder to keep her upright. She has a black eye. The first thing you say to her in two and a half weeks is "How many fingers?"
"Four. I'm okay, Ramir. I just need to sit... down."
"It was two, but good effort." You make her sit on the running board. Thunder sits next to her and whines at you, tail wagging anxiously. "Yeah, I know."
Helena's truck has a freezer. You bump the lock and replace one of the bags of frozen peaches with a handful of bills. It's not stealing if you pay for it. You give Rhea the bag to put on her eye.
"Pull your sleeve up over your hand," you say. "Like that. So your fingers don't freeze. What happened to you?"
"The protests," she says. "I had people I wanted to talk to, but I - couldn't get close enough."
"What were you gonna do, storm the tower?"
"No, I -"
"How was getting martyred out there gonna save your shop?"
She looks down. "You don't want me to save my shop," she says, sulky, like someone much younger.
"Not my point."
She goes silent. After a long while she says, "You said you didn't care."
Maybe you were right all along. Maybe she's always been the sheltered kid you took her for on day one. You're amazed. "And you bought that?"
Rhea has reduced vision out of her right eye until the swelling goes down, so you ride along and spot for her. There's not much to spot, but if she can stand your company again, you're not complaining. She's more fun than some.
Offhand she says, "Do you want to drive, at all?"
You take this for the big gesture of trust that it is, really, you do, but - you snort and look out the window. "Don't give me ideas. I'll never afford my own wheels. Better if I don't get the taste."
She meditates on this a while. Then she says, slow, like this is brand new territory, "Are trucks that expensive?"
"Rhea, you're killing me."
She's doing much better in Tosende Canals. You move back out of her truck for the trip to Anka, because - whatever peace you've made, you don't want to risk breaking it by having to talk about what comes after.
You're starting to think - there are things that'll thrive anywhere you put 'em.
And there's a dead willow tree on Junction Street, and there's tobacco fields drowning in the swamp, and there's every pet you ever tried to take home and couldn't keep happy.
You both came from the same place, but Rhea's one thing and you're another. There was only one place you were designed to belong, and if that place didn't work out, well - hard luck, buddy. Too bad so sad.
About the great railroad reopening - apparently a bunch more robots defected from the farms, that's how they got it fixed so quick. Anka had barely put all the decorations away from the grand opening when the quake hit, so now all the trappings come back out, the party starts all over. You graciously allow a couple planning committee people to take you to lunch, because you sense your days of coasting on this are winding down.
What next? Who knows? Maybe there'll be another earthquake, swallow Bartow up to the center of the earth. It's a coin toss whether that would set you free or break your idiot heart.
The summer you turned nineteen, the caravan came into Bartow and your uncle's place was gone. He'd died while you were gone, and that fast, one of his creditors had swooped in and repossessed the place. Just hauled the old doublewide off to parts unknown – probably to a town that still had a pulse. There was nothing left of the place you grew up but a plumbing hookup and the porch. The porch, attached to nothing and starting to collapse on itself, timbers bleaching in the sun.
Just gone, forever, that's it, good-bye.
You laughed until you started coughing, and you coughed until you tasted blood. You soloed a bottle of wine and puked in the street. [] took you back to Samuel's roadhouse. You remember this. She made you sit down, she gave you water in a metal cup so it wouldn't break if you dropped it. She sat beside you and patted your back and made small talk, and you were glad you had her for an ally. She seemed to know something about how you felt.
And then you shook her off. If she knew, why hadn't she done anything sooner? She could've helped you, as a neighbor or a fellow caravaneer. She never had.
You didn't need her.
It's not personal. It was never personal. But you couldn't count on her, and maybe not on Rhea either. Some people will say all the right things, and then go do whatever they always meant to do anyway.
Caravan's last day in Anka and you still don't know what you're doing. You think you've actually gotten into Nadine's good books for the first time in your life, and it'd be a shame to throw that away. But Rhea's in Nadine's good books too. The trial period is over as of tomorrow, but you're sure the call was made weeks ago; Nadine wouldn't have put up with so much if she was going to drop Bartow from the route. You don't think she'd cut Rhea off cold like that.
You handled it fine last time. For some definitions of "fine." But stick with the caravan and you'll never catch a break. You'll always be going back there and always tempted to pick at scabs. What's the alternative, though? Settle down somewhere? You?
Rhea asks you to teach her blackjack. It's the last day before she goes home - doesn't she have more important schmoozing to do? Or is she that confident she's got all her cargo squared away?
Does she pity you?
"Okay," you say. "It's not complicated."
"Then how do you lose so much money on it?"
She's razzing you, but you left your sense of humor behind somewhere by the roadside. "Just because it's not complicated, doesn't mean it's guaranteed." You strip the rubber band off a pack of cards. "It's like life that way. There are no sure things. You make the smartest bet you can and see what happens. It never pays to get attached to... an idea, or a place."
You're not really paying attention to what you're saying. You're zoning out, shuffle and bridge.
She says, "But sometimes you can't help it, can you?"