Morgan Nyberg - Since Tomorrow

When they arrived, the girl was alone on the couch. She looked like she wanted to cry but was afraid to. The woman was seated on the chair, which was sideways to the table. She was facing away from Frost and Noor and Daniel Charlie and her daughter. Her ruined arm rested outstretched on the table, with the wrist supported by the edge of the basin. The arm drooped at the point of the fracture, but the protruding bones did not touch the table. Blood dripped from the sharp ends of the bones onto the table, on which the alcohol had now dried.

Grace acknowledged Noor and Daniel Charlie with a glance and said “Daniel, you just have to hold her from moving. Noor, you’d better sterilize your hands.”

Frost squatted in front of the girl. She looked down at her dirty knees. Frost said “You and your momma are going to stay here on our farm. At least until your momma feels better.” He took a hand. She did not pull it away, but did not look at him either. “There are some girls here who you could play with. Come, and I’ll show you where they live. You’ll like their room.” Frost let go of the hand and gripped the girl under the arms. The girl gave a cry. “Momma.”

The woman said, from the chair, without turning “Go, Cloud.”

Frost said to the girl “We have to go out so these people can fix your momma’s arm.” He stood, lifting the girl. She put her legs around him because it was the easiest thing to do, but she would not hold on with her arms, and she would not look at him. Frost carried Cloud out of the clinic.

Because the girl would not hold on, Frost was panting by the time he reached the domicile. Will was standing at the door. The girl was a year or two younger than Will. Frost said “Her momma is at the clinic. I’ll take her up to Rain’s.” Will followed them down the half-dark corridor to the entrance of the stairwell. There was no door on it. The only light inside the stairwell came from here in the corridor. Frost started up the stairs.

He went up slowly, balancing the awkward weight of the girl, stopping every few stairs to adjust the load and to catch his breath. When he reached the complete blackness between the floors the first distant scream came. He muttered “Damn” and tried to move a little faster. But then the second scream came, and the third. The girl cried “Momma!” and started to thrash. Frost held on. There was another scream. The girl pushed at him and threw herself from side to side and shrieked “Momma! Momma!” and then started screaming herself. She scratched at Frost’s face. His glasses fell off. He closed his eyes and held on and felt with a foot for the next stair.

“Help” he hollered. “Someone help me.”

He felt Will’s hands at his back.

It was raining hard, and the day was dark, and the only sound was the far-flung hiss of rain on pavement. Frost stood at the summit of his bridge, on the sidewalk. He had on his rabbit skin poncho and a rabbit skin hat. A length of twine held the poncho closed. There was a sword at his side. Water spotted the lenses of his wire-rim glasses as he leaned on the railing and stared westward out over the river. King stood beside him on a twine leash, head and tail drooping. Beside the dog, among stunted grass that grew in cracks in the concrete, a large black plastic bag rested.

On Frost’s right, to the northwest, running down to the river, stretched the same long treeless slope he had seen from Little Bridge, a panorama of mud cut by ravines, splotched by mounds of blackberry and low brush and dotted with collapsed or grown-over buildings. Below him was the old railroad bridge, its open span hanging parallel to the roiling current. To the south of the river was his own farm, bleak and still except for the smoke that spilled from the stovepipes of the domicile. Farther downriver to the left sprawled the vast unkempt plain of Fundy’s farm and the ruins of the airport. Closer, directly to the west, Fundy’s Bridge sat slantwise across the river. There were men on it. It looked to Frost like they had crossbows. Three of them stood at the railing, looking back at him through a quarter-mile of rain.

At the Town end of his bridge three guards and their three dogs watched Frost come down toward them, with the bag slung over a shoulder. When he got close the dogs wagged their tails, and then they all sniffed King and he sniffed them, and there was a little half-hearted prancing. Then they just stood there hang-dog and miserable in the downpour.

Frost set down his bag and said “If Langley’s men come, don’t think about fighting them. They’ve got crossbows and can kill you from the end of the bridge. Just turn the dogs loose on them and run back to the farm. I’m sorry to have to send you out here on a day like this when no one’s crossing the bridge. But you know why. When I go back I’m going to send out four men with two dogs each, and you can all go home and get dry.” He threw the bag over his shoulder, and he and King walked on.

After a while Airport called “You shouldn’t be goin alone.” But Frost neither turned nor replied.

There were maybe two hundred people at the market, collected under the narrow shelter of the span. They crowded the dry packed earth close to the river. As he came near, Frost heard some of them speak his name, more like a ritual utterance than a greeting. Frost. Frost. Like something heard at a grave or a birth. And he heard, already, Lookit. Lookit what I got.

There was a widespread clatter of plastic garments and a tumult of voices raised in desperate negotiation. There was a stink of dirty flesh, of sick flesh and its excretions. King stopped for a second. His eyes were bright, and his fur stood up a little. He made a low noise that was both a whine and a growl. Frost took an extra wrap on the leash.

A dozen people ran out into the rain, thin as ghosts, waving bent nails, bent chunks of aluminum window sash, a foot-wide triangular shard of glass, a rotted and broken board. They had wool ponchos that did not adequately cover their private parts. They had polyethylene slickers, layered for winter insulation. They had poly over wool. They waved their loot like weapons, screaming Lookit lookit lookit!.

Frost said “Speak up” and King dashed left and right on his leash, barking and snarling. The dozen veered away with shouts of fear, or they threw up their arms and tried to stop, flailing, clubbing one another with their miserable loot. They skidded in the mud and collided. The shard of glass fell. Frost led King around the shattered pile as the woman who had dropped it tore at her hair and wailed as if a son had died. Frost said “Settle down” and King was quiet and looked at Frost, and Frost said “Good dog.” Frost stopped and set the bag down and opened it with one hand and reached in and took out a wedge of squash and held it out. The woman came forward, stepping barefoot on the glass, took the squash and walked away into the rain, trying to bite the vegetable with her few teeth.

As Frost walked in under the bridge people made way for him and King. He scanned the crowd as he moved through it to the far edge, where he was faced again with a wall of rain. He turned left and skirted the mob, peering into it. He was a head taller than anyone else, and he could see that many were watching him and that a few were following, calling quietly, Frost. Frost. Lookit.

Where the crowd petered out three men in sheepskin ponchos stood around two bags like Frost’s. They had swords and two of them had spears. Frost said “Getting rid of any wool, Bailey?” and the man who did not have a spear — grey haired, grey bearded, one eyed and hunched, holding a mass of raw wool in one hand and a skein of spun wool in the other — said “There’s nothin’ that I want.” Frost said “What are you looking for?” and Bailey said “Hardware. Tools.” Frost said “I’ll keep my eyes open” and turned back into the crowd, moving through it lengthways now.