On Such a Full Sea (15 page)

And what a tree! was the thought their visitors had as they entered the large circular space beneath its immense canopy, the sunlight filtered by the vines so that there was a cool glow of jade upon everything, like the color of newly sprouted leaves. The scent of the air was richly herbal and of clean, slightly dampened earth. Loreen asked what kind of tree it was and Mrs. Nickelman said a live oak. It was of extraordinary scale; the trunk was massive, indicating a specimen of a couple centuries’ age, and when Quig questioned how it stayed alive with the normally choking vines, Mr. Nickelman explained that the vining wasn’t as invasive as it looked, as they were constantly pruning it back to allow the tree’s own leaves enough air and light, the intertwining complete but not stifling. The vines offered them extra cover, however, from the weather and bad people, and whenever it did storm, the Nickelmans unfurled circular tenting—like a circus top, in fact—from the middle of the tree to both shed and catch the rainwater. Whenever it got too cold in the winter, they let the tenting out, too, and kept warm under that, using electric space heaters running off a diesel generator outside; though, of course, it rarely got too frigid anymore, and then never for very long. The space under the canopy was partitioned by waist-high walls of plyboard into sleeping and living areas, the kitchen just a simple worktable and unplumbed laundry sink and an electric cooktop with two burners. There were a few axes and machetes and pruning clippers for clearing brush. There wasn’t much in the way of possessions, a few plastic storage tubs for pantry items and for their clothes and shoes, and then a big screen for watching the vids Mr. Nickelman took of every performance, which is what the children were doing now, the older ones stopping and starting the vid to analyze their moves and transitions between routines.

Fan was enjoying the vid as well as their serious and thorough discussion, but she had to use the outhouse and one of the girls practically leaped to her feet to accompany her, crying out that she had to go, too. Her name was Hilton and she was maybe nine years old with corkscrew curls and dark brown eyes and reminded Fan of little Star, back in the Smokes. It was obvious she already had a crush on Fan, who was very different from anyone she’d ever seen, plus oddly grown up in the way she held herself but still closer to Hilton’s size than anyone else. She took Fan’s hand and led her back out to the clearing, and when they were halfway to the outhouse, the breeze turned and carried its stink to them. Fan, who was feeling funny, had to halt and bend over and throw up on the ground, her body feeling as though it were turning itself inside out. It was the whole wonderful supper, now wasted, and she thought it was probably because of the fresh vegetables, which she wasn’t used to in such abundance. But she felt instantly better. Hilton said
Gosh
and that she still had to go and so they went to the outhouse, Fan waiting while Hilton relieved herself, which seemed to take a long time but was filled with the girl airing her wishes about Fan staying the night and maybe living with them for a while or from now on and, of course, performing, too. This was when Fan learned that some of the children were adopted, including Hilton, who was only a baby when she came to them.

While Hilton was prattling on, Fan noticed the dog, which was now in a pack of five or six other large, muscular dogs, all of them pushing and growling and madly lapping about the spot where she’d gotten sick. It was a repulsive sight and she turned away, drifting toward a flagless metal pole with beaten-down grass all around it. This part of the clearing was much messier than the rest, marked by loose piles of surplus junk like PVC piping and chicken wire, large rusted bolts and fence spikes. And a smell that was faint but squarely awful now rose, very different from the outhouse stink, like something rotting and drying up rather than foaming and fetid. It was then she was drawn to something bright in the weeds. It was a bone, long and pitted and bleached white from the sun, scarred and gouged down its length by chew marks. She figured it was the dog’s plaything and picked it up, surprised at how heavy it was, when she realized that she was standing in a veritable field of bones, most of them tiny and broken, like bits of branch or stone, with only some of them as large as the one she held.

Hilton stepped from the outhouse with a wide skewed smile, which was not for Fan but the rest of her family, who were now out in the clearing and heading toward them in a pointed mass, Mr. Nickelman at the front, the brass whistle in his mouth. The biggest boys carried machetes. He blew the whistle and the dogs magically aligned onto the family’s formation, trailing them. Shuffling in their midst were Quig and Loreen, who appeared to be clasping hands but were, in fact, secured by their inside wrists and ankles with locking plastic ties. They walked most unsteadily from whatever they’d been given, their eyes glassy but lightless against their pale faces, and before Fan could run, Hilton embraced her from behind with startling strength, a furious but loving hug that would surely never let her go.

I won’t let it happen! Hilton shouted. I just won’t!

Don’t worry your sweet head, Hilly, Mr. Nickelman said, cupping her chin as well as Fan’s. His hand was dry and cold. She’s going to be one of us from now on. She’s just right.

You promise?

I promise. You want to be part of our family, my dear? Why not, right? You’ll have lots of fun.

The entire family was expectantly nodding as though she were simply deciding on whether or not to go on a trip to the mall. And although we can’t be sure exactly what was crossing her mind at that moment, we do know about Fan’s character, which never wavered through her many trials. Was she an especially moral person? That’s
difficult to say. She was consistent, is how we will put it, ever the same and same and same, which we suppose can be seen as a kind of integrity that is all too rare these days.

Okay, she said. But why not all three of us?

There was a communal groan and Mr. Nickelman scratched his head, saying, That’s really not in our plans.

That’s right, the old man concurred.

We’re a bit crowded here, Mr. Nickelman said. You’d fit in easily enough but not two more full-sized people. The missus and I are getting full-sized enough, to be honest.

Oh, Philip!

I’m just trying to explain things to Fan. She’s a very capable girl, I can tell. A special girl. We figured out a long time ago what the best way for us was. Others will go about their living differently—he glanced at Quig and Loreen—and that’s neither here nor there. But we choose to live as simply as we can, as sustainably as we can. It’s a wonderful feeling when things are in balance. We feel liberated but we’re not afraid because of our liberty, as most people out here are compelled to be. And we are as free as anyone in a Charter or where you used to live. Maybe more. Sometimes we have to buy or trade things, of course, but we’ve become pretty good at gardening and cheese making and raising our beloved animals, and I’m sure you could help us in that regard. The main thing is, we strive to be completely independent. Certain times that’s impossible, especially in the winter. But each year we always get by and we gain that much more know-how, and we hope some wisdom, too.

And if I don’t want to stay? Fan asked.

But we know you do! Hilton cried, who was now holding her hand, if just as tightly.

That’s right, Mr. Nickelman said, though not quite sounding so nerdy anymore. He blankly regarded Quig, who was clearly not of his own mind and trying to hold back the mud-black tide surging behind his eyes. But he was failing, failing, and maybe finally giving up.

We know you do, Fan, Mr. Nickelman said. You like our show, don’t you?

Yes.

You want to be in it.

Yes.

You like our family?

She nodded.

And we like you! We do, don’t we?

Yes, yes! their chorus implored.

You see, there’s not much else to say. Not much at all. So why don’t you go in now with the ladies. Hilly and the girls will set you up with bedding. Boys, you know the drill.

The younger boys led Quig and Loreen to the pole, securing their free hands and feet to it with more plastic ties.

Oh god! Loreen cried miserably. We’re going to be their meat!

We don’t eat meat, Loreen, Mrs. Nickelman gently corrected her. We never have and we never will.

But the dogs were silently poised, their maws slick and drooling, the muscles of their shoulders and hindquarters pulsing with anticipation.

I want to say good-bye, Fan said.

That’s so good of you, Mr. Nickelman said. So very good. Please, go right ahead.

Fan, with Hilton still in tow, approached Quig and Loreen, who had slumped down to a half crouch, propped by only the pole and each other. Their eyes were open but not fixing on her, and when she hugged and even kissed each of them, the only thing Loreen could muster was a whisper of
little New China bitch
. Quig said nothing. Fan and Hilton then stepped aside into the weeds and Mr. Nickelman told her it was time now to go inside. This was something she should not see, at least until the next time. But Fan shook her head, which surprised but deeply delighted them all, the blood rising in their necks. The machete-armed boys trooped forward, their blades gray and iridescent.

But then Hilton screamed, holding the side of her face. When she examined her hand it was smeared with blood from a cut running down her cheek. Fan had slashed her with the point of a fence spike. When the armed boys moved toward her, she garroted the girl with the crook of her arm and pressed the point of the spike against her throat.

My Hilly! What are you doing to my baby? Mrs. Nickelman cried. Let her go! Philip!

But Mr. Nickelman couldn’t do a thing. He didn’t dare try to use his whistle. The boys stood down. Fan ordered that Loreen and Quig be cut from the pole and slowly walked to their car and placed in the backseat. She took Hilton in the front seat and started the car, turning it around and rolling slowly back to the main road. The Nickelmans all ran their hands on the car, bleating crazily. Once the entrance cover was cleared by the old man, Fan let Hilton out and then pressed as far down on the pedal as she could, slinging them north in the dusk.

We have previously indicated that Fan had larger aims in leaving B-Mor, but perhaps this is not necessarily true. It may be more a matter of our own shifting perspective on that brief period, what we have come to overlay upon her journeys as we revisit them over time than anything she herself was conceiving, planning, implementing. It would appear that she was completely rash in her actions, even reckless, as she set out from our gates and went forth in search of Reg, armed with nothing more than the force of her feeling. We won’t say “convictions,” because it is not in the least clear that she was marching for some cause or platform. And though it seems impossible to think this now, she may not have had any of us in mind, at any juncture. Indeed, she may have had a purely singular concern, which she followed one step at a time, via one person at a time, trusting (perhaps blindly, certainly stubbornly) that each succeeding moment would obtain enough security and succor and an incremental measure of knowledge, which can only lead to greater wisdom.

If she possessed a genius—and a growing number of us think she did—it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed.

On the other hand, she may have had more particulars in mind than anyone knows. It’s perhaps the only way to explain how she decided to try to make contact with her eldest sibling, Liwei, the one who also left B-Mor, though many years prior and under very different circumstances. Again, we can’t be sure what Fan thought or planned from the beginning or decided along the way, except, of course, for the goal of reuniting with Reg, but she must have known all along that her brother was out there, beyond the walls, and most likely in a Charter village.

Liwei, as we all know, was among the rare few from B-Mor who are promoted each year to join a Charter village, and if they succeed with their foster families and in school and, of course, engage a sustaining career, they can live there as fully fledged citizens. The determination is made solely by the results of the Exams, which the Charters take a grade-specific version of each year but that those B-Mor (and like settlements’) children interested in promotion take only at the age of twelve. It’s primarily a test of mathematical problem solving and logical reasoning, with multiple sections of number and word and spatial puzzles, all of it extremely difficult and not material that is fully covered in our schools. We have made light of Reg’s not even bothering with the test, but the fact is Fan did quite poorly on it, as did most everyone else who takes it. We’re all in a range, as they say. It’s best this way.

For the Charters, it’s much more fraught a process, at least in their last year (when they’re eighteen), with the lowest-scoring decile put on a probationary list and given the chance to take the test once more, when they must score better than half their flagged peers or be slated for service jobs such as retail or teaching or firefighting, unless, of course, they inherit enough money to make a sizable contribution to the directorate as well as permanently sustain a Charter life. There’s always a path. Still, with the stakes so high, Charter parents will spend whatever they must to prepare for this, hiring developmental therapists and tutors when their children are as young as six months of age. For B-Mors, of course, it’s no big deal, for as previously noted, one of ours must score in the top 2 percent of Charter results to be eligible for promotion, this without any enrichment training or tutoring at all.

No surprise that those who do attain that mark number in the handful each year, across all facilities; sometimes there are just two or three; and about a third of the time there is no one at all. This is not to say that there isn’t great excitement when someone does make the grade, as Liwei and a girl from West B-Mor did a few years before Fan was born. Their names along with the others are etched in a stone monument that graces one of our parks, this roster of the exceptional, and departed. Before they leave, their clan will typically host a massive block party that is something like a public festival and an important wedding combined, with long banquet tables of food and drink and loud popular music and booths where they run games of chance, the profits going to defray the costs of traveling to whatever Charter the gifted child has been accepted into, whether here or, very rarely, to a Charter abroad, as there’s a Charter association in pretty much every country, even if there is only one village, as in places such as Iceland and Laos.

The party that Fan’s clan threw for Liwei was especially memorable, as they hired musical performers and had a dunking station with water stocked with some of our very own fish, swimming around clueless as the clan patriarch—a famously grumpy man who has since passed—sat on the plank in his pajamas, kids and adults alike taking their turn hurling a ball at the target beside him. Even he was giddy that day, making the funniest faces for the littlest ones, all the while gamely goading and taunting the long line of throwers. He got plenty wet but climbed back up each time with a smile, knowing that someone in his line would be attaining the heights.

Fan was, of course, not yet present, but with all the stories she must have heard over the years, she must have felt she had been there herself, chanting her sibling’s name with the rest of the crowd at party’s end as he raised his fists over his head, which was donned with a customary crown of herbs and flowers grown in our facility. With tears in his eyes, he waved and bowed good-bye to us, and we shouted: Liwei is our champion! Fare thee well, Liwei!

The understanding, of course, is that we’ll never see this person again, that he or she will not return, even for a visit. For what good would that do? What lasting joy would it bring, to us or to them? Isn’t it better that we send them off once and for all beneath the glow of carnival lights, with the taste of treats on our tongues, rather than invite the acrid tang of doubt, and undue longing, and the heart-stab of a freshly sundered bond? Isn’t it kinder to simply let them exit the gates, and for us to turn away, too, and let our thoughts instead draft up on their triumphs to come?

Because it’s known which Charter they’re headed for, it’s easy enough to picture, given the scads of material you can browse, spying the streets and fields and commercial areas of the village, its layout rarely rectilinear like ours, perhaps to heighten the sense of insularity, perhaps so that you don’t have to see the disheartening terminus of any path or lane. We don’t as a community much concern ourselves with Charter life except in this one regard, but ultimately our annual interest remains an abstraction, seeing the promoted child the same way we might imagine a friend on a foreign tour, say, climbing the steps of some postcard ruin or sampling a local delicacy, giving ourselves just enough detail for shape and color but not for any lingering anxieties, such as how he’ll be welcomed by his new family or accepted at school, which career he’ll pursue, or who will be his mate. You just see that he’s traveled to a kind of heaven, if that’s in your belief system, a place that is presumably better in every way than it is here, and surely never worse.

Fan certainly could look up where Liwei had been accepted, a village named Seneca Hamlet. It’s a simple matter of record. And although Charters are indeed mobile, and can buy a seat on a global and pop in on other Charter villages around the world, and even have the right to live there if they can afford it, very few choose to leave their home village permanently, even for one within the region. Like everybody, they rely on their families and friends and associates for not just the practicalities but for moral support as well. So chances were good enough that Liwei was still in the same village. And probably she couldn’t help but wonder, too, as we would, whether he had successfully assimilated into the life of his adoptive family and community, and taken up a sustaining career, and, most of all, enjoyed the rarefied prosperity that his exceptional performance had surely promised him.

That it might be the very Charter that she and Quig and Loreen were now again speeding toward after the encounter with the Nickelmans would be too coincidental. And yet, even before she was struck that very first night by Quig’s car, she must have had a northward heading in mind, and in this light her initially compelled and then willing residence at the Smokes can be seen as an instance of her singular patience, and faith. Again, we don’t speak of faith much in B-Mor, as there’s really no religious or spiritual practice to speak of, no worship of any kind either in public or within the households. It’s not clear what our people think of the existence of God, or the afterlife, or why we are here. What Fan’s position was on these questions will never be known. She simply had a faith—an amazing, profound faith—that like some great waterfall would not stint or diminish. Where it came from or how she nurtured it is a mystery, and what we can see is that she drew upon it in every episode of her quest, for fortitude and strength. It is thus partly faith, and solid reasoning, at least from Fan’s perspective, that her never-met sibling might be helpful in her aim of reuniting with Reg. Liwei was a Charter, after all, and by definition would have the necessary means or connections or maybe even some power.

After narrowly escaping the lair of the Nickelmans and camping well off the road to pass the night, it took them another full day on the poor roads to reach their destination. Fan drove the entire way, whatever substance Loreen and Quig had been given still affecting their systems. Fan had to stop several times for each of them to vomit on the side of the road, Quig especially pale and sweaty and hardly able to support himself. Fan had to come around the car and help him, using all the strength in her legs to buttress and lift him up from his sickly crouch and push him into the rear seat, where Loreen lay back against her window. At the few service stations along the way, Fan had to buy criminally expensive water to slake their extreme thirst, and if they tried to eat anything, they soon felt sick again. At one point Loreen soiled herself and Fan helped clean her and get fresh clothes from her backpack, after which Loreen mumbled that she was sorry for what she had said, after which Fan simply nodded. She’d hardly registered the slur, given the extremity of the moment, though while driving she did note the epithet. She’d known only B-Mor and so had all the preceding generations of her clan, New China a most distant notion that was hardly ever mentioned, and if so, somewhat disparagingly, say, to point out someone’s haughty airs, such as That’s some N-C style! Yet in bloodlines it was where she came from, it was what she looked like, and when she mused about it now, she wondered whether the legacy should mean more to her, especially as she was carrying a child. It was a talisman that was hers but which she kept solely on a shelf, an object that might indeed be powerful but only if she brought it down and pressed it to her brow and asked something significant of it. But what was that? And how would she ever come to know?

Before they got onto the stretch of well-kept toll road that would take them to the Charter village, Quig took the wheel. They didn’t want to be turned away as diseased so he tried to clean himself up but he still looked ghoulish, his eyes weary and bloodshot, his hair greasy-looking and matted in a lopsided fashion. Loreen appeared no better, crystals of sweat and dried spit clinging to the corners of her mouth. But when he pulled up to the guardhouse of the Charter village, he gave their names and the guard checked them against his screen and scanned their eyes, not bothering with Fan at all, assuming she was either theirs or on offer.

The village sign read Seneca, simply Seneca, and it was the first Charter village Fan had ever visited in person. Was it the same? It was not exactly the name she had looked up, but it was familiar. The village didn’t look totally strange to her, perhaps for the viewing she’d done of other villages, many of which were similarly laid out by one of the two major construction firms. From a satellite view, everything looks crisp and tailored, the curves of the streets and sidewalks arcing out in equal increments from a central open space, like ripples in a lake. Whenever she browsed, and it was not often, she liked to peer in close with the ultrazoom, inspecting the waxed finishes on the cars and ruler-straight joints of the sidewalks (never any renegade cracks) and the tiles of the roofs, which were not plastic or asphalt shingles like those of our free-standing houses but made, incredibly, from a piece of natural stone, each one with a distinct pattern and hand and its own earthy or flinty shade.