Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Miki had to jump back as the vehicle came sliding towards her. She made the pavement, but immediately lost her balance and would have fallen if there hadn’t been a NO PARKING sign there for her to grab onto. Meanwhile the pickup had come to a halt and the driver had opened his door. Standing on the running board, he looked over the top of the cab at her, plainly concerned.

“Are you hurt?” he called.

Miki straightened up. Spanish, she decided from his accent.

“No,” she told him. “I’m fine.” Adding, “Now go away,” under her breath.

He seemed friendly enough, but he also looked very strong and capable, and really, what was he doing out here? He could be one of the looters, for all she knew, what with that truck and all. Lots of room in the bed for all sorts of things.

“Let me give you a lift,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”

“I can take you as far as Handfast Road.”

He was a looter, she thought. Because there was no way anyone from the Beaches would be driving such a scruffy old truck. But he didn’t look mean, and she was so bloody wet and tired, and he was going right to Handfast, and what was he going to get from her anyway? There was nothing to loot except a baseball bat and she was sure she didn’t exactly look the picture of enticement and allure, no matter how hard-up he might be. She was more like some half-drowned alley cat.

“Okay,” she said, sliding her way over to the pickup. “Thanks.”

When she got in, he turned up the heat then reached behind the seat and pulled out a colorful Mexican blanket which he handed to her.

“Here,” he said. “Maybe this will help you warm up a little. There’s coffee in the thermos.”

Oh, lord. Coffee. Warmth.

She hesitated a moment, then took the blanket and wrapped it around herself.

“How come you’re being so nice to me?” she asked.

He gave her a surprised look.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything,” she went on, “but it just seems a little weird. It’s not like you know me or anything.”

“Wouldn’t it be a better world if we all looked out for each other?”

“Well, yeah,” Miki replied. “Except it’d also mean that we were on Mars or something.”

He gave her a thin smile. Putting the pickup into gear, he started it on its forward crawl once more.

“I think this storm is a good thing,” he said. “It reminds us that we don’t have to live in a faceless city, where we are all strangers. We are a collection of communities. To get by, we need to count on each other.”

“Until someone stabs you in the back.”

“I live over on the East Side,” he told her.

Miki nodded to show she was listening, though she didn’t understand the context of what he was telling her. There was a regular barrio there in amongst the projects, separate from, yet a part of the cheap housing the city had put up for those in need of shelter. The buildings had all been filled up and fallen into disrepair almost before they’d been erected.

“Today,” her Good Samaritan went on, “I saw known drug dealers and gang members helping neighborhood widows clear ice from their roofs, pick up groceries, move their families to the shelters when they lost their power.”

“And the point being?”

He shrugged. “We are working together for a change. I find myself wishing this community spirit was something that would last beyond the storm.”

Miki nodded. She helped herself to a Kleenex tissue from the box on the dash, then poured herself a cup of the coffee. All she needed now was a cigarette.

“So why are you going to the Beaches?” she asked.

“I work on one of the Estates,” he said. “At a place called Kellygnow. Their phone is out and I’m worried about how they are doing. I would not have come but Maria Elena—my wife—could see how I was worrying, so after I took her to stay with a neighbor who still has electricity, she told me to go.” He glanced at Miki. “I would not have left her otherwise.”

Miki felt about two inches tall.

“I thought you were a looter,” she said.

“Why? Because I’m Latino?”

“God, no. Because of the truck. I mean, can you see the rich hoity-toits up there driving something like this?”

“And now?” he asked.

“I feel like a bloody eejit.”

He smiled and took a hand from the wheel, offering it to her. “I am Salvador Flores.”

“Miki Greer,” she said, shaking.

“Should that not be Minnie?”

“What… ? Oh, right. Ha ha. Big Disney fan, then?”

“So where are you going?” he asked.

“Same place as you—Kellygnow.”

“I’ve not seen you there before.”

“I’ve never been there before,” she told him. “But I think my brother’s gone up there to cause some trouble and I want to stop him before he does.”

Salvador frowned. “Trouble? What sort of trouble?”

“I wish I knew. He’s fallen in with a rough crowd. Do you know anything about the Gentry?”

He shook his head. When Miki went on to describe the hard men, he added, “I’ve seen no one like that on the grounds.”

“Then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re not at Kellygnow.”

“I hope they’re not. We don’t need more trouble. The weather’s enough.”

“Nobody needs trouble,” Miki said.

She sunk lower in her seat and finished off her coffee. She was warmer, but that only made her wet clothes that much more clammy and uncomfortable. Her throat was feeling worse by the minute.

“You are not a happy woman,” Salvador said after a few moments.

Wet and bedraggled as she was, who would be? But she knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“There hasn’t been a lot of good going on in my life these days,” she said. “Too many disappointments, I guess.”

“Because of your brother?”

Miki shook her head. “Not really. I’m more disappointed in myself.”

“That’s not so good,” Salvador said. “In the end, all you have is yourself.”

And when that’s shite? Miki wondered. Great. That made her feel just bloody wonderful. But he was right. If you couldn’t like yourself, how could you expect anybody else to like you?

“Do you mind if I have a smoke?” she asked.

He shook his head. “But we’ve arrived.”

She looked up through the windshield as he pulled over towards the curb. The pickup slid to a stop against the sidewalk. Salvador shifted into neutral and put on the hand brake.

“Or at least we’ve come as far as the truck will take us.”

No kidding, Miki thought. Handfast Road was one solid sheet of ice going up the hill. There was no way the pickup could make it up that slippery grade. She didn’t think anyone could even walk up it.

“Perhaps you should stay in the truck,” he added. “There’s plenty of gas and you can warm up while you wait.”

“No,” Miki told him. “This is something I’ve got to do.”

Salvador shrugged. Reaching behind the seat again, he pulled out a yellow rain slicker to match the one he was wearing.

“Put this on,” he said. “It’s Maria Elena’s, but she won’t mind.”

“Thanks.”

He waited for her on the pavement while she struggled to put the rain slicker on. Outside she lost her balance, but he plucked her up as she was falling and set her on her feet. He was strong, she thought.

“We can’t use the road,” he said, nodding towards it with his chin.

Miki took in the ice-slick slope of the street once more and sighed. Lighting a cigarette, she let him lead the way around behind the houses where they crunched a path through the crust of snow that covered the lawns in back.

After all he’d experienced in the past twenty-four hours, Hunter felt he shouldn’t have been surprised by anything at this point. He’d already learned the hard way that the world held far more in its familiar boundaries than he could ever have imagined. It was all so astonishing, from the mean-spirited threat of the Gentry to the quiet awe of the native manitou, never mind the business of avoiding the ice storm by moving through some between place where the foul weather couldn’t touch them. But nothing could have prepared him for that moment when they stepped from winter into autumn.