Imperfect or not, she’
d love her child, even if it could only be hers for a year. An entire year without appointments! A year to nurse and care for her child, watching it grow. A year to love it, and the rest of her life to mourn when they took it away.
−3-
Buildings taller than any Tobin had ever seen towered over him, their blank window spaces like glowering eyes. Many of them were half-destroyed, the upper floors missing or exposed to the elements. Weeds and shrubs grew up there with crazy abandon, and he knew he hadn’t imagined the glimmer of eyes watching him from the foliage.
He’d spent four days of hard riding and another two figuring how to get off the Transcon in order to reach the city. Apparently the Transcon had been built to bypass New York City like it did everything else, and though its exit ramps were well-marked most of them had become unnavigable due to damage. A lot of it looked purposeful, as though some time ago someone or some groups of someone had decided to cut off all access from the highway to the city beneath. Tobin had been able, finally, to pick his way down one rubble-strewn ramp, fearing at any moment it might collapse. After that it had been another day’s travel across a swinging footbridge that had obviously been newer-built, though it looked as abandoned as everything else.
“So much for finding people here.”
The sound of his voice rang through the dirty streets and echoed in the alleyways. It embarrassed him. In Eastport he hadn’t heard any voice but his own for over a year before the peddler came. Here in the city, among the garbage and the buildings, the clear sound of his own words flew back at him as startlingly as a slap in the face.
It wasn't the first time since leaving home that he wondered if he'd been right to follow the advice of a stranger. This city was ugly. Probably dangerous, too.
Tobin pushed his bike a few more feet, picking his way carefully around the detritus that threatened to maim him or the bike if he didn’t watch his step. Shards of glass and other junk littered everything. He saw an old tire, charred and sprouting wires from its core. A doll’s head, one eye poked out and replaced with a pencil stub. Paper. Unidentifiable pieces of metal.
A gust of wind rattled the garbage and made the hair stand up on Tobin’s neck. He pulled his coat closer around his chin against the chill. He strained to look up, up again, wondering if he’d ever get used to the sight. Eastport’s tallest building had been the church, and the bell tower had blown off that during a winter squall three years ago. Although he knew logically that they were man-made of mortar, steel, brick and stone, Tobin couldn’t help feeling these immense structures had sprung from the earth full-blown, like mountains. Now he knew why they were called skyscrapers.
His stomach goinged. It had been half a day since he’d last eaten. He could stop and open his pack, scrounge around for the last of the bread and cheese he’d brought from home or open a few of the cans he’d brought from the warehouse club, but Tobin thought he’d wait. The sun was dipping too rapidly behind these monoliths for his comfort. Dark would fall in the city sooner than he’d expected. He needed to find shelter.
An empty space yawned at him from the ground floor of the skyscraper closest to him. Apparently it had been a storefront with a big glass showcase window. The glass was long gone. The sign still swung on rusted hinges, creaking.
“Schenk’s.” Below the letters were some other scribbles, words in a language he didn’t recognize. “Kosher delicatessen.”
The wind kicked up again, and the sign creaked back and forth with a sound like a kitten crying. It might have been a sad sound, or even a scary sound, but Eastport had many old shops with signs that creaked in the wind. The difference was most of those stores still had glass panes in them, if they hadn’t been removed to use in something else. Even if they’d broken, the glass was never left to lie around on the ground.
“It’s all we’ve got,” Old Ma had always told him. “You can ask why we care, Tobin, when it’s only us here, but that’s what I’ll tell you. It’s all we’ve got.”
When Old Ma and Old Pa had gotten on in years, too old to repair and tidy the town they’d lived in all their lives, Tobin had continued keeping things nice. Old Ma had died in her sleep, peacefully, two years ago. Old Pa had followed not long after, leaving Tobin alone until the peddler came.
He’d been the first in perhaps seven years or more, a wizened old man with hair the color and consistency of summer clouds. Unlike many of the peddlers who had visited Eastport over the years, he pushed no cart. Everything he had to trade came from his pack or from out of his mouth. Canned goods and stories.
Tobin had been happy to give up some eggs and smelly cheese in exchange for the canned goods, but the stories were worth more than anything he had to trade.
“There used to be billions of people,” the peddler told him while they sat together at Tobin’s scarred kitchen table. “Like the stars in the sky at night.”
Tobin wanted to scoff, but couldn’t. What the peddler told him sparked a longing he hadn’t realized he had. He was lonely. A place filled with people, brimming with different faces and voices, called to him like some sweet but somehow illicit fantasy.
The old man slugged back a shot of Old Pa’s liquor, the last in the bottle. “But then something happened. What, I can’t rightly say. For a while it must’ve seemed like the world was full to bursting, and people didn’t want to keep having kids. Then time passed and people started seeing that nobody was having babies no more. Even those that wanted them couldn’t have ‘em.”
“Do you remember that?”
The peddler shot him a look of disdain. “I’m old, but I ain’t as old as all that. No, son, I just hear stories. Tell the tales. That’s all. People stopped having babies, and then there were no children to grow up and take the place of those who died. They had all those batteries to make their cars go and keep their lights on, power their cell phones, but nobody to drive the cars or turn on the lights or answer their calls. Nobody left to do much of anything.”
Tobin tried to imagine a world overflowing with people. “That was a long time ago.”
The peddler rubbed his eyes. “Not so long as you might think. A couple generations, maybe three, four...There was no storm of fire, like the God-pushers predicted. There was no apocalypse. Just a slowing down. Tell you what, son. Why not come with me? Hit the open road? I can’t promise you we’ll always have food in our bellies or a roof for our heads, but it’ll be a lot more adventure than you’re likely to find here. And I’m not bad comp’ny, if I do say so.”
Tobin had never left the island, never crossed the causeway. Being alone had been sort of a way of life for him, though for the past year it had been more excessively lonely than it had ever been. He’d mourned his grandparents long enough. Maybe it was time for him to light out.
Before he could answer, the peddler laughed. “You don’t have to look so excited. I get it. I’m an old man, and a stranger. You’re likely looking for someone a little younger. A little more…feminine, maybe? Can’t say as I blame you, son, though I’ll say my interest in such things has long passed me by. I can tell you where to go, son. California. I’ve been up and down this coast a hundred times, Tobin, and I’ve heard the same stories over and over from travelers who come from the West.” The old man leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. “There are babies being born in California. Lots of babies.”
They parted the next morning with Tobin still undecided. It might be one thing to go along with a peddler and another to head for a place Tobin half-believed was just another fairy-tale. The peddler didn’t press him, just got back in the patched and leaking rowboat he’d used to cross the sunken causeway.
“Things’ve changed a mite since I was here last. Been about twenty-nine years or so, I’d say, since I last crossed this water. I recall your mother. She was a pretty thing. Hair just like yours.” The peddler had grinned and waved good bye. “Wish I’d come across sooner, but there’s no helping it now. Glad to s
ee you’ve grown up all right.”
It was not until that night, tossing and turning on his lumpy mattress, that Tobin realized the old man had been trying to say he was probably Tobin’s father. It had been enough of a reason for him to leave the only home he’d known.
He looked back up at the sign. He didn’t know what kosher meant, but he thought delicatessen was a sandwich shop. There wouldn’t be any food left. He didn’t bother with the door, which hung crazily on its hinges and was half blocked by a large metal can. Instead, Tobin stepped carefully through the front window, lifting his bike with a smoothness that came from long practice. Once inside, he propped the bike against the wall and dropped his pack.
Inside, the darkness was nearly complete. Tobin got out his new palm-sized lantern, the one with the fresh batteries, and turned it on. The front room, at least, was empty. If there had been tables and chairs, they’d long been scavenged. The floor was dirty but recognizably of black and white tiles, set on the diagonal. What had once been a glass-fronted case ran the length of the store in the back. The glass glittered on the floor now, and dust and rat droppings covered shelves that once must have held food.
At least the dust was undisturbed, which meant nothing had been here in a long time. Tobin wasn’t quite ready for visitors. The lantern threw gargantuan shadows along the walls with every movement. Night had fallen fast and hard, and his stomach protested again, louder this time. He smiled. Old Ma had always allowed she could set a clock by Tobin’s stomach.
Tobin didn’t want to stay in the front room. The massive window, so innocuous in the daylight, now offered too much invitation to the night. He wasn’t afraid of being alone, but in a strange place, he’d feel better if he were hidden.
Behind the empty glass case was another door, and through that, a compact and surprisingly tidy storeroom. The bare shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling must once have been laden with supplies. Tobin shone the lantern as high as he could reach, not really hoping to find anything.
But wait! What was that, high up on the shelf, tucked so far back in the corner he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a shadow? There was nothing to stand on, but that didn’t stop him. The promise of something to eat inspired motivation. Tobin used the shelves as a ladder, climbing to the top and snagging the small shapes he’d spotted.
Cans. Cans usually meant food. He was far from starving, but a find was a find, and he’d been brought up to never waste anything. Tobin pulled three cans and a glass jar back with him to the ground.
“Whitefish in jellied broth,” he read on the glass jar. He shook it gently. Several grayish lumps jiggled gently inside a gelatinous mess.
Tobin put the jar inside his backpack. It didn’t look like food, but it would be foolish to throw it away when he might be hungry enough to try it later. He’d eaten worse in his life, that was for sure. Maybe he’d have better luck with the cans.
“Manishewitz,” he read. “Chicken soup with matzoh balls.”
He had no idea matzoh balls might be, or what kind of animal might once have grown them, but chicken broth he knew. Old Ma had kept chickens. He’d scattered plenty of seed for them before leaving, but he knew most of them would be dead by now. Chickens were dumb. No survival instinct.
The other two cans were more of the same. The labels had faded and dust covered the cans, but they weren’t bulging or dented. He’d eat one of them for dinner with the bread and the last of the cheese, saving the packages he’d found in the warehouse club for later in the trip.
Tobin made one last trip out to the front of the store to get his knapsack, backpack and bedroll. He felt uneasy about leaving his bike, but there wasn’t enough room in the storeroom for it. He’d woken enough mornings already with spoke marks on his cheeks. It could stay out front.
Back in the storeroom, Tobin set the lantern on one of the higher shelves and turned down the glare a little. Unrolling the new sleeping bag, he paused to marvel for a minute at how soft it was. It had no holes, the stitches were still neat and clean, and the zipper worked. And warm! It was luxury, more comfortable almost than his bed had been back in Old Ma’s cottage.
He busied himself opening up the stove and activating the batteries. In a few minutes the soup was heating quickly in his small pot, and the last of his bread was toasting on the other burner. He satisfied his thirst with a few quick swigs from the canteen, wishing it would rain so he could collect some fresh water.
He made a spot for his bed and sat cross-legged on it while he ate his soup. It was good and hot, with a sharp tang he recognized as salt. They’d used the last of their table salt to celebrate Tobin’s eighteenth birthday, and ten summers had passed since then.
With the dark outside and his stomach full, there wasn’t much else to do but go to sleep. He’d finished his last book two nights ago. Now, more than ever, he missed having someone to talk to.
Growing up it had never seemed strange to him that in books cities teemed with people and traffic jammed the highways, while on the island it was only the five of them. There were many things in books that didn’t seem possible. Overpopulation seemed just another fiction, like people having babies just by having sex. Sex, he understood…or at least could imagine. Tobin had never seen a baby.
None of his family ever talked about what had happened to empty the world so thoroughly. Maybe they were too old to really remember. More likely, they didn’t really know. Old Ma might reminisce about stores stocked with anything you could want, but Old Pa had told him once she couldn’t possibly remember that. Their mother had been a young woman when the last stores on the Island were gutted. They’d listened to Mother’s stories so many times it seemed as though they’d happened to them, but they didn’t.
Tobin knew his mother had died just after he was born, leaving him in the care of Old Ma and Old Pa, and Aunties Heather and Francie. He also knew that the five of them were the only ones living on the island. There might be more folks on the mainland, but they rarely crossed over. For all intents and purposes, the five of them might have been the only people in the world at all.
His stomach full, Tobin got up to stretch. He looked around the small storeroom. Reaching out his arms, side to side, he could just about touch the walls. The accommodations weren’t luxurious, but after being on the road for so long, an enclosed space, a safe place, was more than enough to make him happy.
Tobin wiped out his bowl and packed away the stove. Tomorrow he would start all over again, wandering the empty and desecrated streets, looking for the inhabitants the peddler had promised he’d find. The thought depressed him a little and excited him, too. He was setting out on a whole new life.
Tobin rolled himself into the sleeping bag and closed his eyes to sleep. When he opened them, it was because a knife was pressed to his throat.
−4-
When he’d finished his pumping and wheezing, Reb Ephraim left the bed as silently as he had entered it. He started to dress, covering nakedness that only became embarrassing now that they were no longer engaged in the act. Elanna turned her eyes away, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting him to look at her.
It wasn’t all bad, being with him. He performed quickly and competently, and always gave her something nice. She relished his speedy efficiency. He didn’t waste time in pointless conversation. He didn’t pretend he needed to woo her.
Elanna knew other people always had sex solely for the pure pleasure of it. Sometimes she envied those people their sweating and groping and guiltless, unpressured lovemaking. Most times she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to make love without the knowledge that she might, this time, be creating life. Sometimes she couldn’t believe that was the only time she did it.
“Here,” Reb Ephraim said, startling her. She hadn’t noticed he’d finished dressing. He handed her a small box that rattled when she shook it.
She forced a smile to her face and opened the box. The contents glittered in the lantern’s dim light, and she bit her lip in disapp
ointment. Elanna took the earrings, though she didn’t really want them. A new pair of pajamas would’ve been a more practical and appreciated gift. She could’ve used a warm coat, too, or a new pair of shoes. Instead, she got jewelry.
“They’ll look gorgeous on you, my dear.” He sat on the bed to put his shoes back on, hunching to reach.
Quickly, Elanna knelt and slipped the shoes onto his feet, then tied them. “Thank you, Reb. They’re beautiful.”
He lifted her chin with his finger until she looked into his eyes. “But you don’t like them.”
Why did such a simple question cause her eyes to fill with tears? Elanna smiled anyway, afraid to wipe her eyes because that would make the tears real. She didn’t want him to ask if she were crying. She just wanted to go back to her quarters and go to bed.