Morgan Nyberg - Since Tomorrow

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve already sent him away. I had to, or the others might have killed him when they found out.”

She turned to him. She was beaming. The smile was firm and real. “I’ll need some scissors.”

Frost nodded. She stepped quickly to him and kissed him on the lips. He went out.

As he entered the domicile he looked back. Grace was standing half hidden by a corner of the clinic, watching him.

Slowly he climbed the dark stairs to her floor. He stood for a long time in the dim corridor outside her door. His thumbs were hooked in the twine belt of his trousers. He appeared to be looking down at the floor, or perhaps listening to the sounds of the domicile. A child crying. Voices. Coughing. Jessica came from somewhere and stood beside him. She said “What’s wrong, Frost?” He did not answer or look at her, even when she laid a hand on his shoulder. So she went away. The sound of her footsteps faded in the stairwell. Frost pushed aside the plastic curtain and entered Grace’s room.

He lifted an edge of the mattress and bent and picked up a small black plastic bag. He dropped the mattress and peered into the bag and saw a fistful of powder.

When Frost came out of the domicile it was raining. He stopped on the steps and sighed and hung his head for a minute. Then he went and harnessed Beauty and hitched her to a small wagon. He climbed onto the seat and drove to the clinic and waited. Grace came out. She said “Please, Frost.” Frost did not look at her. Then he did. He saw an expression on her face he had never seen before. It was the expression of someone he did not know. He looked away. They were silent for quite a long time, she standing there looking up at him, he staring straight ahead. The rain pattered on the boards of the wagon’s box. Without turning he nodded slightly, and she came around and climbed up and sat on his right. He twitched the reins, and they started out.

They went up onto the trail that ran beside the old freeway. They headed south through the rain. They saw nobody. There were no birds and no rabbits. The coyotes were quiet. The wet brush and mounds of blackberry vine stretched away as far as they could see, punctuated here and there by chimneys. Occasionally there was a small meadow. Beauty’s hooves fell like a pulse on earth softened by rain. Grace was quiet. Frost did not look at her.

They passed the tall building just east of the trail. It leaned but not as much as the domicile. Now there was nothing but the desolate scrub-grown plain of the delta. To the east rose the towers and span of Nobody’s Bridge. Frost felt the wagon seat trembling, but he did not turn to Grace. She said in her torn voice, almost screaming “Frost, I’m sorry!” She gripped his arm so hard that he winced. With his free, left hand he seized her wrist and pulled her hand loose. “I’m sorry! Please!” Without putting her hands to her face she sobbed. It sounded like she was shouting. Beauty looked back and snorted.

After a few minutes Grace was quiet. She hissed “It’s your fault, Frost. You shouldn’t have put me in the clinic. You knew I wasn’t strong.” She glared at him, but he did not turn. “It’s your fault, and now I’m going to die alone out here.”

Frost said nothing, and Grace began to cry again, but more quietly. Finally she quit, and like Frost she stared straight ahead.

Frost said “Whoa” and Beauty stopped. Frost and Grace sat there on the wagon seat staring ahead into the rain for several minutes. Then Frost nodded. After another minute Grace climbed down from the wagon.

Frost turned the wagon and headed north, the way they had come. He had gone perhaps a hundred yards when he heard Grace calling behind him. “Frost, I’m sorry! Please don’t hate me!”

He did not turn.

“Frost, I love you!”

Frost’s face contorted, and his shoulders shook. He snapped the reins to make Beauty go a little faster.

The rain had stopped. Daniel Charlie was standing at the top of the old exit, where the trail swung down onto Frost’s farm. Solemnly he watched Frost pass. Frost did not look at him, and neither of them spoke. Daniel Charlie followed the wagon toward the domicile. At the front of the building Frost got down and went in the entrance. Daniel Charlie led Beauty away with the wagon.

Will was waiting outside the door of their apartment. Frost said nothing to him. Will followed him in and said “Is Grace gone?” Frost went and opened a cupboard and took out a green plastic bottle, almost empty. He left the apartment. As he passed Will he said “Yes, she’s gone.”

“Was it her who poisoned the dogs?”

Frost nodded. He went down the dim corridor to the end, where the spud room was. Across from the spud room there was a wooden door with a lock on it. It was a corroded combination lock with the numbers almost worn away. He opened the lock and slipped it into the pocket of his tunic and pushed the door open. The hinges creaked loudly.

The window in the far wall was shuttered like the one in the spud room. Frost opened one of the shutters. Then he went back and pushed the door shut. Below the window sat the still in its mortared fire-pit. Nearby on the floor sat a large white plastic container. It had a wide red lid upon which rested a blue funnel. TOMATO KETCHUP was on the side in faint red letters.

Frost set the funnel into his own bottle and knelt and unscrewed the lid of the big container. He lifted it and held it against his side and poured in the hooch and set the container down. He did not put the lid back on. He went and sat against the wall opposite the still. He drank, winced, stared out the window at the flat grey sky. The room was musty, but cold air spilled in the window and across Frost’s feet. He drank again. When the door hinges squawked he turned. Brandon came in.

Brandon had his own bottle, almost empty. He stood looking down at Frost for a minute. He said “Is that you, Frost?” Then he gave a kind of growl and went and filled his bottle exactly as Frost had done. He came and sat beside Frost. Their shoulders were touching. His smell was musky and strong. He lifted his bottle in a toast, said “Up yours” and drank.

After a while Brandon said “What’s the combination, Frost?”

They drank in silence.

Soon Brandon sang, quietly. “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…”

After an hour Will came in and closed the shutter and helped his grandfather up and out of the hooch room. Brandon filled his bottle again and also went out and down the corridor, bumping from wall to wall. As his grandfather leaned on him Will closed the door, took the lock from Frost’s pocket, hooked it over the staple, clicked it shut and spun the dial.

In the dilute dark of predawn King rose from where he had been curled beside a circle of dead embers. He stretched, wagged his tail and went forward to receive a scratch behind the ear from the man who was passing among the sleeping guards. The man, Granville, said nothing, but lifted his hand to the two guards on duty, who nodded back to him.

Granville walked down the bridge and into Town. He stayed on the trail that ran up the middle of the ravaged street, and continued on it where it veered westward. He passed a few low apartment blocks. If there was life inside these buildings there was no sign of it. They were dark and silent. There was no sound but his own careful footsteps along the uneven path, and his own breathing. Before the trail again swung perpendicular to the river he turned off and picked his way cross-country at an angle on a smaller mud path and crossed a scrub-grown lane and then a street and met Town Trail again two blocks north. Here he stopped and waited.