Kiss Me, Stranger. Ron Tanner

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      The rest agree. I’m carrying two packets of cheese-food concentrate and a one-pound bag of lentils. “We’ll eat soon,” I promise.

      The sleet has ceased and a pale blue-gray blur marks the horizon behind us, either the rising moon or sun. Westside is as big as a shopping mall parking lot—a chewed-up expanse of hillocks and holes skirting the modest neighborhoods where the migrant workers live. A scatter of plasticbag tents and car-part hovels crowd one corner of the field. I see two camp fires.

      “Cannibals!” Nadia hisses.

      “Stop it.” I turn to the others. “Watch your step. There are some deep holes here.”

      Rumor says the entire Capital was built on landfill, which may have been what our President was referring to when he said, “We will live or die on the garbage of the past!”

      “Take out your weapons,” Nadia tells her siblings.

      “What weapons?” I ask.

      They wave spatulas and long-handled spoons at me, the distant firelight glinting orangely from the moving metal.

      “We’ll fight to the death,” Nadia says. “Won’t we, gang?”

      “To the death!” several echo, though I hear Blu and Pierce and Aida whimpering.

      “That won’t be necessary, dears. Really.”

      “No?” says Nadia. “Then who’s this coming at us?”

      A dark figure is striding over the upturned garbage, heading our way in a hurry. He carries a staff or spear.

      “Ho, there,” I call, feeling stupid. I meant to say Hi, there!

      “Ho,” he answers, only it’s not a he, it’s a she—a tall woman wearing a cloak of rags. In the dim light, the helmet on her head appears to be an overturned aluminum colander. She looks us over then says, “It’s a little late to be out with the family, don’t you think?”

      “We’re refugees,” I explain. “And very tired.”

      “Are you a cannibal?” Lori asks.

      “You don’t ask that,” Nadia scolds.

      “But if she’s a cannibal how are we to know?” Lori whines.

      “It’s simple,” says the stranger, “you know when you get eaten.”

      Blu starts bawling.

      “She’s joking,” I tell him. Then I look sharply at the stranger. “Right?”

      “Sorry,” she says. “Will you kiss me, stranger?”

      I give her a peck on each cheek, then one on the tip of her dirty nose. It’s an old folk custom. Nobody knows when it started but apparently it’s prevented a lot of misunderstandings.

      The children start kissing each other. This makes a few laugh. The stranger introduces herself as Skip. “Watch your step,” she cautions. “Last week someone disappeared out here.”

      “Is that another joke?” Nadia asks.

      “No, that’s for real,” Skip says. She turns to me. “I recommend life-lines.”

      “Thanks,” I say bitterly. This is what I’ve brought my children to?

      The campfires are the largest I’ve seen in a while—each wide enough to accommodate the full circle of my family. As I boil water for our dinner, the children are nodding off, one leaning into the other. The only other person awake beside me and Skip is an old man. They call him Oyster because that’s what his ruined eye looks like. He remembers the pre-Presidential days. He says, “Before The Man re-made the money and built the Ferris Wheels and those statues to his wife’s dogs.”

      “He’s a walking archive,” Skip says.

      Oyster is a small, scoliotic man with a big head and surprisingly large hands, which remind me of Marcel’s. He wears an overcoat and duct-taped boots. Pierce has fallen asleep at his elbow.

      “I want to know if my husband and eldest son are alive,” I say to Oyster, startling myself with this abrupt request. I survey the children to see if any have heard. I see Nadia narrow her eyes at me disapprovingly.

      “I’m not a fortune teller,” Oyster says. When the fire flares I see that his coat is blistered with bullet holes. “I’m sorry.”

      “No,” I say, “I’m sorry.”

      When the lentil-cheese-food soup is done, the children eat sleepily, passing the pot from one to the other for a spoonful. This is all we have. I imagine all of us perishing tomorrow, fallen through the bottomless holes of the landfill. I damn my own incompetence, then lean my shoulder into Skip’s and close my eyes for a moment and imagine that I am sleeping soundly on a summer’s night.

       3. A Dream of My Son as a Sergeant

      In my sleep, I see my son with his Squad, all of them painted blue. Then I realize that he’s joined the Revolutionary Militia, not the President’s. When this is over, my son’s Captain is saying, we’re going to live in luxury apartments on the Avenue of the Beloved Saints, have free cable—one hundred eighty-two channels—and everybody’s going to shop groceries from their home terminals. We won’t ever have to go outside again, we’ll live like queen bees!

      My son expects the Captain to take a bullet in the neck for a stupid statement like that. The Captain is standing on the roof, waving his arms at the cloudy sky, which looks like a gutted mattress—he’s an easy target for snipers, a good clean shot right through the neck, but he goes on talking, waving those lanky arms, saying any thing to goose and gander the boys.

      At twenty, the Captain is the oldest of them, with a fine mustache thick as his thumb and dyed bright blue, like the color of those downy chicks we used to buy the children for Easter. How my dear Lon would love a roasted chick right now! Some of the boys have been trying to catch pigeons but, stupid as they are, pigeons are surprisingly hard to catch—you get close to them, think you’ve got them, little waddling squabs within hands-reach, then, Shazam! (as my Marcel used to say) they’re gone, fluttering a little farther off. Lon wants to shoot one the way his pal Crazy Peter did a week ago, but you shoot one, he’s learned, and nothing’s left. Hunger makes you stupid, he has decided.

      Which accounts for Captain’s speech, why he’s brought the boys up to the roof when they should be below raking through the debris for survivors and stragglers. We’ve got the President’s Militia on the run, the Captain says, got ‘em scared. We’re like pestilence, he says, we’re like the wrath of God, we’re like СКАЧАТЬ