Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Sure you are! And we’re going to get you something to eat. You trust Candy. Nimo, come on!”

Half a block down, the delicatessen was silent and dark, its windows filled with bread, bottles, and hand-lettered cardboard signs.

“You’d think they’d be there, wouldn’t you?” Candy said. “They used to be open till nine.”

“If they were there,” Stubb remarked practically, “you couldn’t get in and scarf a sandwich. You haven’t got any money.”

“What the hell do you mean, a sandwich? A super-Dilly, with pastrami, corned beef, roast beef, liver sausage, and Russian dressing, with a bowl of matzo-ball soup and a malted. Jim, can you get us inside?”

Stubb squinted at the door. “Maybe I could, but I won’t.”

“For Christ’s sake, Jim! You want me to bust the window with a brick?”

“No, I want you to walk about another four blocks. Then I’ll get you whatever you want to eat. Come on.” The small man started down the icy sidewalk. After a moment Nimo followed him, carrying the boy.

Panting, Candy waddled after them. “Jim, this better be good. My feet hurt and my legs hurt, and I’m cold. And I’m so God-damned hungry I could eat my own arm.”

Nimo was scratching the crown of his head, arm held high and hand bent in an exaggerated gesture of rube puzzlement. “We’re getting close to my clownhouse,” he said. “I can show you an unlocked window, but there isn’t much in my Peterpantry.”

“Nah,”. Stubb said. “It isn’t that. We’re going to the Sandwich Shop. Candy just reminded me—it’s Friday night.”

There was a bonfire in the middle of the street; stores on both sides had been broken into, but the looting was nearly finished now. A few children, newly dressed in heavy clothing, pawed through what remained. A few adults stood warming their hands at the fire occasionally tossing rubbish onto it: fragments of a broken counter, papers, scraps of carpet, and the heads and limbs of mannequins. “Somebody hurt?” they asked, seeing Candy’s uniform. She nodded and hurried after Stubb and Nimo.

A liquor store farther down had been abandoned even by the pillagers, a cold, reeking cavern of darkness and broken glass. She hesitated, knowing nothing remained, yet unwilling to leave its odor, the failed promise of warmth and cheer. It seemed to her that they might have left a single case, even if it were only of half-pints, half-pints of rum or some filthy cordial, for those like herself who passed in the street. She began to curse softly as she puffed along. She knew a great many evil words, and she was still cursing when they reached the entrance of the Sandwich Shop.

“Now we’ve gone from door to door,” Nimo said, “without ever getting in. I wish the dark Delilah would clip this lock too.”

“You’re crazy,” Candy told him as she came puffing up.

“He means Madame S.,” Stubb explained as he examined the lock. “He thinks that she, or one of her people, picked the lock of the emergency exit. He’s probably right.”

“Jim, she was right there talking to us.”

“Sure, but where were we? How close to the door? She could have been working on the lock while she talked. Or she may just have had the tools and given them to one of the others.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any tools like that?”

“Used to, but I hocked them.”

“I saw a movie once where this private detective had a little piece of plastic in his wallet, and he stuck it in the door and opened it.”

“Sure. I use a credit card—that’s what everybody uses. But it only works on spring locks, and not on all of them. This is a night bolt. You want to wait here? I’m going down the alley.”

“I don’t even go in there when the lights work.”

Nimo said, “I’ll come!”

“Not with Little Ozzie, you won’t. He stays here with me.” Candy took the boy from Nimo’s shoulders, hugged him for a moment, and set him down “I’m glad you’ve got your coat, Little Ozzie. Are you cold?”

“Pretty. When will we see my dad again?”

“When we get back to the hotel, I guess. I—”

The woman must have run up the dark street; but because they had not seen or heard her, it seemed she had not come but materialized, appearing like a ghost out of the blackness. “A nurse! Oh, thank God, a nurse! Please come, please!”

Taken aback, Candy could only ask, “Where?”

“Half a block. It’s just half a block. Please! I couldn’t carry her, so I was going to come here—there’s a little cart thing—but she could bleed to death … .”

“I’m coming,” Candy said. “I’m coming.” She bit her lips. “Oh, Lord, my legs. If you only knew how far I’ve walked today.”

“Please,” the woman said. “She may be dying.”

Candy broke into a limping trot. “What. Happened. To. Her?”

“She’s my mother-in-law. They own that place down the street. Sam and me live with them. I’m not Jewish—do I look Jewish? Over there. I put her in the doorway.”

In the dark, the woman crumpled in the doorway might have been a bundle of old clothes. Panting, Candy dropped to her knees beside her.

“Listen, I know about your legs. You nurses walk all day, and then with the power off and no transit—”

“Never mind. About. My legs. We need light. Any kind.”

“I’ve got a lighter.” There was a rattle as the woman who was not Jewish fumbled in her purse. “So when the power went blooey and the fires started, she went. They’re not supposed to, but she went anyhow. Sam wasn’t home yet. Neither was her other son. I told her I’d go—”

“What did they hit her with? A bottle?”

“I think a piece of pipe. I thought they were going to rape me, but I guess because it’s so cold … You must be freezing.”

“I am. Gimme a cigarette.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said give me a cigarette. You’ve got a lighter, you must have cigarettes too. I want to light it before your lighter goes out.”

The non-Jewish woman fumbled in her purse again. “They took my money, my MasterCard, everything. Sam will have a fit. Is she okay?”

“Hold that lighter steady for a minute, will you? Little Ozzie, don’t touch her.” Candy drew deeply on the cigarette, until its end glowed almost as brightly as the shrinking blue flame. “No, she’s not all right. She’s got a bad concussion, maybe a fractured skull—I can’t tell for sure. She ought to be X-rayed. Until we can do that, she ought to be kept warm; lying out here in the cold’s the worst thing in the world for her. What is this? This cigarette?”

“A Virginia Slim. She could die?”

“I never tried them. Always hated the ads. Yeah, she could die. The last concussion I worked on, the doctor thought the guy was going to be just fine. I helped bandage him up. Only he wasn’t fine—he went kind of crazy. That was only a couple days ago. God damn it, I wish the lights would come back.”

“Can’t you bandage her here?”

Candy shook her head. “She’s not bleeding bad, and fooling around with her like that in the dark, I might do more harm than good. Didn’t you say she owned a place around here? Can’t we get her inside? We might be able to find something to cover her up with.”

“The Sandwich Shop, down the street. Do you think we can carry her?”

“Sure, only we gotta be careful not to bang her head. If the skull’s fractured, another bump might do it.”

“I’ll help,” Little Ozzie said.

“You’re a good kid. Okay, you take one foot, and this lady can take the other one. I’ll grab her under her arms.”

“The lights came on” as one newspaper was later to describe it, “and everybody went home except the firemen.”