Cell: A Novel (19 page)

The woman named Natalie began to laugh. “Well tough
shitl
It’s a disturbing-ass world!” Around them, people continued doing the Refugee Walk. No one paid any attention and Clay thought,
So this is how we act. This is how it goes when the bottom drops out. When there are no cameras turning, no buildings burning, no Anderson Cooper saying “Now back to the CNN studios in Atlanta.” This is how it goes when Homeland Security’s been canceled due to lack of sanity.

“Let me take the boy,” Clay said. “I’ll carry him until you find something better to put him in. That cart’s shot.” He looked at Tom. Tom shrugged and nodded.

“Stay away from us,” Natalie said, and all at once there was a gun in her hand. It wasn’t a big one, probably only a .22, but even a .22 would do the job if the bullet went in the right place.

Clay heard the sound of guns being drawn on either side of him and knew that Tom and Alice were now pointing the pistols they’d taken from the Nickerson home at the woman named Natalie. This was also how it went, it seemed.

“Put it away, Natalie,” he said. “We’re going to get moving now.”

“You’re double-fuckin right you are,” she said, and brushed an errant lock of hair out of her eye with the heel of her free hand. She didn’t seem to be aware that the young man and younger woman with Clay were holding guns on her. Now people passing by
did
look, but their only response was to move past the spot of confrontation and potential bloodshed a little faster.

“Come on, Clay,” Alice said quietly. She put her free hand on his wrist. “Before someone gets shot.”

They started walking again. Alice walked with her hand on Clay’s wrist, almost as if he were her boyfriend.
Just a little midnight stroll,
Clay thought, although he had no idea of what time it was and didn’t care. His heart was beating hard. Tom walked with them, only until they were around the next curve he walked backward, with his gun still out. Clay supposed Tom wanted to be ready to shoot back if Natalie decided to use her little popgun after all. Because shooting back was also how it went, now that phone service had been interrupted until further notice.

10

In the hours before dawn, walking on Route 102 east of Manchester, they began to hear music, very faint.

“Christ,” Tom said, coming to a stop. “That’s ‘Baby Elephant Walk.’ ”

“It’s
what?”
Alice asked. She sounded amused.

“A big-band instrumental from the age of quarter gas. Les Brown and His Band of Renown, someone like that. My mother had the record.”

Two men pulled even with them and stopped for a blow. They were elderly, but both looked fit.
Like a couple of recently retired postmen hiking the Cotswolds,
Clay thought.
Wherever
they
are.
One wore a pack—no pussy day-pack, either, but the waist-length kind on a frame—and the other had a rucksack hanging from his right shoulder. Hung over the left was what looked like a .30-.30.

Packsack wiped sweat from his seamed forehead with a forearm and said, “Your mama might have had a version by Les Brown, son, but more likely it was Don Costa or Henry Mancini. Those were the popular ones. That one”—he inclined his head toward the ghostly strains—“that’s Lawrence Welk, as I live and breathe.”

“Lawrence Welk,” Tom breathed, almost in awe.

“Who?”
Alice asked.

“Listen to that elephant walk,” Clay said, and laughed. He was tired and feeling goofy. It occurred to him that Johnny would
love
that music.

Packsack gave him a glance of passing contempt, then looked back at Tom. “That’s Lawrence Welk, all right,” he said. “My eyes aren’t half-right anymore, but my ears are fine. My wife and I used to watch his show every fucking Saturday night.”

“Dodge had a good time, too,” Rucksack said. It was his only addition to the conversation, and Clay hadn’t the slightest idea what it meant.

“Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Band,” Tom said. “Think of it.”

“Lawrence Welk and his Champagne
Music Makers,”
Packsack said. “Jesus
Christ.”

“Don’t forget the Lennon Sisters and the lovely Alice Lon,” Tom said.

In the distance, the ghostly music changed. “That one’s ‘Calcutta,’ ” Packsack said. He sighed. “Well, we’ll be getting along. Nice passing the time of day with you.”

“Night,” Clay said.

“Nope,” Packsack said. “These’re our days now. Haven’t you noticed? Have a good one, boys. You too, little ma’am.”

“Thank you,” the little ma’am standing between Clay and Tom said faintly.

Packsack started along again. Rucksack fell sturdily in beside him. Around them, a steady parade of bobbing flashlight beams led people deeper into New Hampshire. Then Packsack stopped and looked back for a final word.

“You don’t want to be on the road more than another hour,” he said. “Find a house or motel unit and get inside. You know about the shoes, right?”

“What about the shoes?” Tom asked.

Packsack looked at him patiently, the way he’d probably look at anyone who couldn’t help being a fool. Far down the road, “Calcutta”—if that’s what it was—had given way to a polka. It sounded insane in the foggy, drizzly night. And now this old man with the big pack on his back was talking about shoes.

“When you go inside a place, you put your shoes out on the stoop,” Packsack said. “The crazy ones won’t take them, don’t worry about that, and it tells other people the place is taken and to move along, find another. Saves”—his eyes dropped to the heavy automatic weapon Clay was carrying—“Saves accidents.”

“Have there been accidents?” Tom asked.

“Oh yes,” Packsack said, with chilling indifference. “There’s always accidents, people being what they are. But there’s plenty of places, so there’s no need
for you
to have one. Just put out your shoes.”

“How do you know that?” Alice asked.

He gave her a smile that improved his face out of all measure. But it was hard not to smile at Alice; she was young, and even at three in the morning, she was pretty. “People talk; I listen. I talk,
sometimes
other folks listen. Did you listen?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “Listening’s one of my best things.”

“Then pass it on. Bad enough to have
them
to contend with.” He didn’t have to be more specific. “Too bad to have accidents among ourselves on top of that.”

Clay thought of Natalie pointing the .22. He said, “You’re right. Thank you.”

Tom said, “That one’s ‘The Beer Barrel Polka,’ isn’t it?”

“That’s right, son,” Packsack said. “Myron Floren on the squeezebox. God rest his soul. You might want to stop in Gaiten. It’s a nice little village two miles or so up the road.”

“Is that where you’re going to stay?” Alice asked.

“Oh, me and Rolfe might push on a dight farther,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because we can, little ma’am, that’s all. You have a good day.”

This time they didn’t contradict him, and although the two men had to be pushing seventy, they were soon out of sight, following the beam of a single flashlight, which Rucksack—Rolfe—held.

“Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers,” Tom marveled.

“ ‘Baby Elephant Walk,’ ” Clay said, and laughed.

“Why did Dodge have a good time, too?” Alice wanted to know.

“Because it could, I guess,” Tom said, and burst out laughing at her perplexed expression.

11

The music was coming from Gaiten, the nice little village Packsack had recommended as a place to stop. It was not nearly as loud as the AC/DC concert Clay had gone to in Boston as a teenager—that had left his ears ringing for days—but it was loud enough to make him think of summer band concerts he’d attended in South Berwick with his parents. In fact he had it in his mind that they would discover the source of the music on the Gaiten town common—likely some elderly person, not a phone-crazy but disaster-addled, who had taken it into his head to serenade the ongoing exodus with easy-listening oldies played through a set of battery-powered loudspeakers.

There
was
a Gaiten town common, but it was deserted save for a few people eating either a late supper or an early breakfast by the glow of flashlights and Coleman lanterns. The source of the music was a little farther to the north. By then Lawrence Welk had given way to someone blowing a horn so mellow it was soporific.

“That’s Wynton Marsalis, isn’t it?” Clay asked. He was ready to call it quits for the night and thought Alice looked done almost to death.

“Him or Kenny G,” Tom said. “You know what Kenny G said when he got off the elevator, don’t you?”

“No,” Clay said, “but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“ ‘Man! This place rocks!’ ”

Clay said, “That’s so funny I think my sense of humor just imploded.”

“I don’t get it,” Alice said.

“It’s not worth explaining,” Tom said. “Listen, guys, we’ve got to call it a night. I’m about kilt.”

“Me too,” Alice said. “I thought I was in shape from soccer, but I’m really tired.”

“Yeah,” Clay agreed. “Baby makes three.”

They had already passed through Gaiten’s shopping district, and according to the signs, Main Street—which was also Route 102—had now become Academy Avenue. This was no surprise to Clay, because the sign on the outskirts of town had proclaimed Gaiten home to Historic Gaiten Academy, an institution of which Clay had heard vague rumors. He thought it was one of those New England prep schools for kids who can’t quite make it into Exeter or Milton. He supposed the three of them would be back in the land of Burger Kings, muffler-repair shops, and chain motels soon enough, but this part of New Hampshire 102 was lined with very nice-looking homes. The problem was, there were shoes—sometimes as many as four pairs—in front of most of the doors.

The foot-traffic had thinned considerably as other travelers found shelter for the coming day, but as they passed Academy Grove Citgo and approached the fieldstone pillars flanking Gaiten Academy’s entrance drive, they began to catch up to a trio just ahead: two men and a woman, all well into middle age. As these three walked slowly up the sidewalk, they inspected each house for one without shoes placed at the front door. The woman was limping badly, and one of the men had his arm around her waist.

Gaiten Academy was on the left, and Clay realized this was where the music (currently a droning, string-laden version of “Fly Me to the Moon”) was coming from. He noticed two other things. One was that the road-litter here—torn bags, half-eaten vegetables, gnawed bones—was especially heavy, and that most of it turned in at the gravel Academy drive. The other was that two people were standing there. One was an old man hunched over a cane. The other was a boy with a battery-powered lantern parked between his shoes. He looked no more than twelve and was dozing against one of the pillars. He was wearing what looked like a school uniform: gray pants, gray sweater, a maroon jacket with a crest on it.

As the trio ahead of Clay and his friends drew abreast of the Academy drive, the old man—dressed in a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows—spoke to them in a piercing, I-will-be-heard-all-the-way-to-the-back-of-the-lecture-hall voice. “Hi, there! Hi, I say! Won’t you come in here? We can offer you shelter, but more importantly, we have to—”

“We don’t have to anything, mister,” the woman said. “I got four burst blisters, two on each foot, and I can hardly walk.”

“But there’s plenty of room—” the old fellow began. The man supporting the woman gave him a look that must have been unpleasant, because the old fellow stopped. The trio went past the drive and the pillars and the sign on old-fashioned iron S-hooks reading
GAITEN ACADEMY EST. 1846
“A Young Mind Is A Lamp In The Darkness.”

The old fellow slumped over his cane again, then saw Clay, Tom, and Alice approaching and straightened up once more. He seemed about to hail them, then apparently decided his lecture-hall approach wasn’t working. He poked his companion in the ribs with the tip of his cane instead. The boy straightened up with a wild look as behind them, where brick buildings loomed in the dark along the slope of a mild hill, “Fly Me to the Moon” gave way to an equally sluggish rendition of something that might once have been “I Get a Kick out of You.”

“Jordan!” he said. “Your turn! Ask them in!”

The boy named Jordan started, blinked at the old man, then looked at the new trio of approaching strangers with gloomy mistrust. Clay thought of the March Hare and the Dormouse in
Alice in Wonderland.
Maybe that was wrong—probably it was—but he was very tired. “Aw,
they
won’t be any different, sir,” he said.
“They
won’t come in. Nobody will. We’ll try again tomorrow night. I’m
sleepy.”

And Clay knew that, tired or not, they were going to find out what the old man wanted… unless Tom and Alice absolutely refused, that was. Partly because the old man’s companion reminded him of Johnny, yes, but mostly because the kid had made up his mind that no one was going to help in this not-very-brave new world—he and the one he called
sir
were on their own because that was just how it went. Only if that were true, pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything worth saving.

“Go on,” the old man encouraged him. He prodded Jordan with the tip of his cane again, but not hard. Not painfully. “Tell them we can give them shelter, we have plenty of room, but they ought to see, first. Someone needs to see this. If they also say no, we will indeed give up for the night.”

“All right, sir.”

The old man smiled, exposing a mouthful of large horse-teeth. “Thank you, Jordan.”

The boy walked toward them with absolutely no relish, his dusty shoes scuffing, his shirttail hanging below the hem of his sweater. He held his lantern in one hand, and it fizzed faintly. There were dark up-all-night circles under his eyes, and his hair badly needed washing.

“Tom?” Clay asked.

“We’ll see what he wants,” Tom said, “because I can see it’s what
you
want, but—”