Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers

Those were the scariest words, me, I ever heard.

Ready for us for what ?

But I’d bring Lizzie and Annie there if I had to, me. If they got too hungry. If there wasn’t no other way for me to feed them.

I came to a place where dogtooth violets used to grow, them, back in June. I dropped to my knees. They sang out in pain, them, but I didn’t care. I dug up all the dogtooth violet bulbs I could find and stuffed them into my pockets. You can roast them. My jacks already held acorns, to pound into flour — wearying work, it — and some hickory twigs to boil for salt.

Then I settled down, me, on a rock, to wait. I held as quiet as I could. My knees hurt like hell. I waited, me.

A snowshoe rabbit came out of the brush, him, on the opposite bank, like he was right at home. Casual, easy. A rabbit ain’t much food to use up a bullet. But I was cold enough, me, so I knew I’d start shivering soon, and then I wouldn’t never be able to hit nothing.

Bullet or rabbit? Old fool, make up your mind.

I saw Lizzie’s hungry eyes.

Slowly, slowly, I raised the gun, me, and squeezed off the shot. The rabbit never heard it. He flew up in the air and come down again, clean. I waded across the creek and got him.

One good thing — he fit under my coat, him. A deer wouldn’t of fit. I didn’t want nobody hungry to see my rabbit, and I didn’t want to stay around, me, near where the gun fired. An old man is just too easy to take things away from.

But nobody tried, until Dr. Turner.

“You’re going to skin it ?” she said, her voice going up at the end. I could of laughed, me, at the look on her face, if anything could of been funny.

“You want to eat it, you, with the skin on?”

She didn’t say nothing, her. Annie snorted. Lizzie put down her terminal and edged in close to watch.

Annie said, “How we going to cook it, Billy? The Y-unit don’t get hot enough for that.”

“I’ll cook it. Tonight, by the river. I can make an almost smokeless fire, me. And I’ll roast the violet bulbs in the coals.” It made me feel good to see how Annie looked at me then.

Lizzie said, “But if you — where are you going, Vicki?”

“To the cafe.”

I looked up. Blood smeared my hands. It felt good. “Why you going there, Doctor? It ain’t safe for you.” The stomps still gather at the cafe, them. The foodbelt’s empty but the HT works.

She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Billy. Nobody both-* ers me. But there’s something going on down there, and I want to know what.”

“Hunger’s what,” Annie said. “And it don’t look any different at the cafe than it does here. Can’t you leave those poor people alone, you?”

“I’m one of those ‘poor people,’ as you put it,” Dr. Turner said, still smiling without nothing being funny. “I’m just as hungry as they are, Annie. Or you are. And I’m going to the cafe.”

“Huh,” Annie snorted. She didn’t believe, her, that Dr. Turner wasn’t eating some donkey food somehow, and nobody could convince her any different. With Annie, you never can.

I finished skinning the rabbit, me, and showed Annie and Lizzie how to pound the acorns into flour. You have to cook a bit of ash with it, to take away the bite. It was late afternoon, already dark. I wrapped the rabbit meat in a pair of summer jacks, which pretty much kept the smell inside unless you were a dog. I put a small Y-lighter in my pocket, and set out for the river, me, to make a fire.

Only I didn’t go to the river.

More and more people were walking to the cafe. Not just stomps, but regular people. In the winter dark they hurried, them, hunched over but fast, like something was chasing every last one of them. Well, something was chasing me, too. I sniffed hard to make sure nobody really couldn’t smell the fresh rabbit meat, and then I walked into the cafe.

Everybody was watching the Lucid Dreamer concert, “The Warrior.”

I had the feeling that people’d been watching all day, them. More and more, coming and going but even the goers coming back for more. I guess, me, that if your belly’s empty, it helps to have your mind feel good. The concert was just ending when I come in, and people were rubbing their eyes and crying and looking dazed, like you do after lucid dreaming. But I saw right away that Dr. Turner was right, her. Something else was going on here. Jack Sawicki stepped in front of the holoterminal and turned it off. The Lucid Dreamer, in his powerchair, with that smile that always feels like warm sunlight, disappeared.

“People of East Oleanta,” Jack said, and stopped. He must of realized, him, that he sounded like some donkey politician. “Listen, everybody. We’re in a river of shit here. But can do things, us, to help ourselves!”

“Like what?” somebody said, but it wasn’t nasty. He really wanted to know. I tried to see, me, who it was, but the crowd was too packed in.

“The food’s gone,” Jack said. “The gravrail don’t work. Nobody in Albany answers, them, on the official terminal. But we got us . It’s what — eight miles? — to Coganville. Maybe they got food, them. They’re on a spur of the gravrail franchise, plus they’re a state line, so they got two chances for trains to be running, them. Or maybe their congressman or supervisor or somebody arranged for food to come in by air, like ours, only it didn’t stop. They’re in a different congressional district. We don’t know , us. But we could walk there, some of us, and see. We could get help.”

“Eight miles over mountains in winter?” Celie Kane yelled. “You’re as crazy as I always thought, Jack Sawicki! We got a crazy man, us, for a mayor!”

But nobody yelled along with Celie. I stepped up onto a chair, me, along the back wall, just to see this more clearly. The feeling you get after a Lucid Dreamer concert still filled them. Or maybe not. Maybe the concert had got down inside them, from watching it so much. Anyway, they weren’t raging, them, about the donkey politicians that got them into this mess, except for Celie and a few like her. There’s always them people. But most of the faces I could see, me, looked thoughtful, and people talked in low voices. Something moved inside my belly that I didn’t never know was there.

“I’ll go, me,” Jack said. “We can follow the gravrail line.”

“It’ll be drifted in bad,” Paulie Cenverno said. “No trains for two weeks to blast the snow loose.”

“Take a Y-unit,” a woman’s voice said suddenly. “Turn it on high, it, and melt what you can!”

“I’ll go, me,” Jim Swikehardt said.

“If you make a travois, you,” Krystal Mandor called, “you can bring back more food.”

“If they got food, them, we could set up a regular schedule—”

People started to argue, them, but not to fight. Ten men walked up near Jack, plus Judy Farrell, who’s six foot high, her, and can beat Jack arm-wrestling.

I climbed down off my chair, me. One knee creaked. I shoved my way through the crowd and stood next to Jack. “Me, too, Jack. I’m going.”

Somebody laughed, hard and nasty. It wasn’t Celie. But then they stopped, all at once.

“Billy…”Jack said, his voice kind. But I didn’t let him finish. I spoke real low and fast, me, so nobody could hear but Jack and, standing next to him, Ben Radisson.

“You going to stop me, Jack? If you men go, you going to stop me from walking along behind you? You going to knock me down, you, so’s I can’t follow? Lizzie’s hungry. Annie don’t have nobody else but me. If there ain’t enough food brought back from Coganville, you telling me Lizzie and Annie, them, are going to get a fair share? With Dr. Turner staying with us?”