Amerika Read online

  Peter shifted his weight to reposition himself. He considered getting into the naivete of her outlook, but decided it was best not to. “How’s your program?” “Fabulous. I’ve been working on this one move where I come off a leap and use my momentum to come up in a handstand. I had trouble with that move for a long time. I couldn’t develop enough momentum.” She smiled proudly. “But I got it.”

  “Great. I’d like to see it.”

  “Come to tryouts this afternoon.”

  Peter looked uncomfortable. “I’ll try, honey. But if it’s a tryout, I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to use my influence for my daughter.”

  “Sure, I understand.” She sighed, looking into her coffee mug as if to be certain he knew she didn’t.

  He walked over to her. “Jackie, I’m not sure you do. I’ve got to be fair, and being fair isn’t just what I may intend something to be—it’s got to look fair as well.” He raised her chin and smiled into what could have been her mother’s eyes. “I love you—you know that. I’m proud of you and your dancing.”

  She nodded. “I know. It’s just not always easy being the great man’s daughter.”

  He smiled and gave her a quick kiss as he headed for the door. “I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not always easy being the great man.” He buttoned up his heavy winter coat. “Got to go, sweetheart,” he said, laughing, and shut the door behind him.

  Devin felt rejuvenated by the brisk chill of the morning air. He walked, eyes front, alongside the guard, suddenly aware of the barracks coming to life. Upon reaching the administration building, they entered a small barren hall in which four other prisoners sat waiting, each accompanied, as he was, by his own guard. As Devin sat down away from the others, a woman prisoner entered from another door. No one spoke; all looked directly ahead: five men, one woman, and six guards. A moment later, a man in American army fatigues entered. The American army, Devin reflected bitterly. In essence there was no such thing anymore. The great old cotton uniforms were about all that remained. But then, the same could be said for what used to be civilian America. The guts, the spirit of it were gone. All that was left were some scattered artifacts with brand names on them: shredded Levi’s that people still wore, cans of Miller High Life at the side of busted-up highways, rusted-out Plymouths that might last one more winter.

  At once the guards commanded, “ ’Tenshun!”

  The six came sharply to attention. The officer gave a small nod and commanded the prisoners to sit.

  The officer looked at the six prisoners unwaveringly for what seemed like several minutes. “In a few hours you will have your names returned to you. I am here to remind you why you came to be numbers deserving no more respect than a cipher. You disgraced your country and brought shame and hardship on your families.

  “At Fort Davis we have tried to demonstrate the value of having a name that is used in the service of your society, not your own self-indulgence. Now you will always have your number. It will follow you wherever you go. It is waiting to be used again, should you fail to apply the lessons learned here. For those who have any doubt about your rehabilitation, I owe it to you to tell you that if you thought this stay was unpleasant, the next will be worse. You will all rise and take the oath of allegiance. Anyone not comfortable pledging that allegiance is free not to do so.”

  At once, the six prisoners stood. The officer studied them a moment longer, then turned toward another officer. “Sergeant?”

  At his command, the sergeant walked to the head of the room behind the officer and pulled a cord. A large flag dropped from the ceiling—a new and strange flag, frightening by its very benignity. Against a blue background were crossed Soviet and American flags. Suspended in the crux were the white globe and olive branch symbol of the United Nations.

  “You lead, 83915,” the officer commanded.

  Devin hesitated for a brief second, took two steps forward, and faced the flag, as did the other prisoners. They began to recite the pledge of allegiance: “I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the community of American, Soviet, and United Nations of the World, and to the principle for which it stands—a nation, indivisible with others of the earth, joined in peace, and justice for all.”

  The words came out devoid of meaning or emotion or inflection, as if the voices from which they issued were barely human. But then, emotion was not demanded or even desired. Rote recitation was good enough; the object was compliance, not belief. The goal was to breed the habit of not caring. Insincerity was expected and not punished. The game was far subtler than that.

  Peter Bradford lifted the garage door and looked across the bare fields that began at the edge of his property. A light powdering of snow had dusted the dark land; the air smelled electric. He climbed into a twelve-year-old Wagoneer, which was as new a vehicle as anyone in Milford owned. The great U.S. automaking plants had been idle ever since the so-called New Understanding had gone into effect. Peter turned out of the drive onto the tree-lined street heading toward town. He kept twisting the radio dial as he drove, but all he could find was the double-talk that passed for news: talk about increased production and U.S.-Soviet trade and friendship. He changed the station and got John Philip Sousa. Flicking the dial once again, he was party to a Spanish language lesson.

  Switching off the radio, he circled the main square of Milford. In the center of the square was the county courthouse, a relic of the early part of the twentieth century. It was a massive red-brick building adorned with pillars and a dome. Even though he saw it almost every day, for some reason this morning it evoked in him the sort of thought he barely allowed himself anymore: the realization that America had once been a nation of high strivings and of grandeur.

  On the courthouse lawn stood the proud statue of a World War I soldier, and also the spacious gazebo that for years had served as the focal point for local ceremonies.

  Milford had been a bustling market town when the courthouse was built, a center of commerce for farmers. Soon thereafter, however, the community began a long, slow decline. First, in the 1920s, the new railroad line bypassed Milford. Later, during the 1960s, the new interstate highway also went elsewhere, taking with it the potential business and industry that might have spared Milford its economic malaise.

  However, if the town of Milford was considered an economic failure, it was a success in other ways. Its wide tree-lined streets were as uncrowded and inviting as they had been in the twenties, and its gracious old homes were as comfortable as they had ever been. The town had little crime, little poverty, and a genuine sense of community spirit.

  Peter passed several battered pickups, an ancient John Deere tractor, and a horse and wagon, as well as a couple of vintage cars. The primary mode of transportation in Milford, however, seemed to be bicycles, which far outnumbered all other vehicles combined. Self-consciously, Bradford nestled his jeep between the rows of bikes in front of the only lighted sign in the square:

  HERB ’N BETTY’S CAFE GOOD EATS

  The neon had long since given up trying to hit all the letters, and it wavered gamely in the gray morning light. Peter entered Herb ’n Betty’s, nodding to the assortment of farmers, truckers, and loafers who gathered there to play cards, gossip, and drink what passed for coffee. The walls were decorated with an elk head, stuffed ducks, and old basketball trophies; the tables were covered with stained, red-and-white-checked tablecloths. As Peter headed for his regular booth in the comer of the cafe, a farmer stopped him to complain about a long-delayed replacement part for his tractor. Another grizzled old-timer seized his arm, leaning into him conspiratorially to ask about the latest talk of guerrilla forces.

  “My wife’s sister told me her husband ran off and joined. He was one of them survivalist types. She said there was hundreds of ’em, living in caves in the Rockies.”

  “Can’t believe every rumor comes along—”

  “Yeah, but what if it’s true?”

  Peter shrugged. “Not a lot to do with us, I guess.” The farme
r shook his head, reluctantly agreeing. Peter moved toward his booth. Before he had time to take off his coat and sit down, Betty, the timeless owner of the cafe, walked over with a cup of coffee. Betty was a local institution—ageless, shapeless, but seldom speechless. She wore a net over her graying mop of reddish-brown hair, and a sleeveless brown sweater over her white uniform.

  “What’ll it be, Peter?”

  “Aunt Jemima pancakes with Log Cabin maple syrup, maybe some little pork link sausages, two eggs over easy, and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.” “Yeah, me too.” She smiled at Peter, licking her lips as though she could taste the remembered favorites of the past. “Would you settle for soy cakes with some fresh molasses?”

  “Don’t I always?” Peter smiled.

  “If you want better, you’ll have to go out to the SSU barracks. I saw a load of stuff go out there yesterday— eggs, pork chops, steaks. Maybe they got your Aunt Jemima. Just tell ’em you’re the county administrator and they’re in the county.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “’Course, you’d have to eat with ’em.”

  Being reminded that he did, in fact, have options, made him uncomfortable and dimly ashamed. Before she could go on, he hastened to make it clear that what everyone else ate was plenty good for him by cutting in with “I’ll take the soy cakes, thanks.”

  At that moment, Ward Milford walked in. He was wearing his deputy sheriff uniform, clean Levi’s, a faded flannel shirt, and a fur-lined parka that had seen him through many a cold winter. His wind-stung face set off the whiteness of his unruly shock of hair. Betty automatically poured him a cup of coffee, grunted a good morning, and shuffled away.

  “She’s not real chipper this morning,” Ward said. “She’s having supply problems.”

  Ward tasted the coffee and grimaced. “It’s tough, living in the middle of the most productive farmland on the planet, and all you can get is soyburgers.”

  “So what kind of night did we have?”

  “Not so hot. A drunk, just passing through, been drinking lighter fluid. Died. Emergency wouldn’t pump his stomach.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Some new regulation. Triage, they call it. You know what that means?”

  “Yeah, doctors decide who to treat and who not to treat. In essence, it means doctors play God.”

  Ward shrugged. “Anyway, the poor bastard died.” “I’ll talk to Alan Drummond about it. I don’t like seeing people die like that, even some wino drifter.” “Besides the wino,” Ward continued, “we had some runners passing through, probably on some sort of errands for the Resisters further west. We looked the other way. And some kids stole an SSU jeep and took it for a joyride.”

  “Any idea who?”

  Ward’s face broke into a sheepish grin. “Probably my son or one of his friends.”

  “Pass the word, we don’t need that kind of problem. Why rattle the cage? And listen, no matter what Dr. Drummond says about his new regulations, I want an honest record of what happens if someone dies, be it a wino, a drifter, whatever.”

  “You think it matters?”

  “It does to me. Dammit,” said Peter Bradford, as if struggling desperately to hold on to his own sense of decency. “It’s got to matter.”

  Ward stared at him, his face suddenly intense. “What matters to me is that my great-grandfather helped build this goddamned country—cut down the trees with his own hands—built his spread into ten thousand acres. The damn county is named after us, and whatta we got now? Fifty damned acres and I’m a deputy sheriff under a system that decided there shouldn’t be a sheriff. I worked my whole life, and this is where it goes. Sometimes I feel like we’re the only ones who think it does matter. Country’s dead anyway.”

  “Speaking of death,” said Betty, who had sidled toward them balancing a couple of plates, “here’s your soy cakes.”

  She clattered the plates down rudely on the table, and the two men, more from habit than appetite, dug in.

  After one bite, Peter Bradford laid his fork aside. “This is really awful,” he said, his eyes fixed on the colorless lumps on his plate.

  Ward’s face relaxed into a small but mirthless smile. “That’s what really makes you want to give up. You can’t even get a good breakfast.”

  Chapter 2

  A few miles outside Milford, a long, poplar-lined driveway branched off the main road and led to a once-proud Victorian farmhouse. Now, though, the house was in sorry need of repair. Its dilapidated state suggested more than the usual shortages of paint, tools, and building supplies. Those shortages were almost universal during the so-called Transition—that vague and pretty-sounding term for the limbo America had fallen into. But the sad state of the old Victorian farmhouse bespoke another sort of lack—an absence of spirit, a vacuum of hope.

  Alethea Milford, standing in front of her bathroom mirror and gazing at her own red-rimmed eyes, saw that same vacuum of hope reflected in her weary face. Alethea was a big woman—nearly six feet tall—and in her soul she knew that frame had been intended to house an outsized destiny. Once, perhaps, her spirit had been generous and expansive; now it was shriveled and pinched.

  She took things far too personally, and she knew it. Her brothers Ward and Devin—-they could externalize their rage, could make accommodations. She could do nothing but seethe inside—-and drink. And in the throes of that drinking, cast herself into more dubious forms of self-abandonment than she cared to think about at seven o’clock in the morning.

  It would have all been different, she ruefully considered, if only the whole world hadn’t gone crazy around her. She’d been one of those young women whose life was all in place, who had a plan. At the time of the Soviet attack, Alethea Milford had been an honor student at the University of Nebraska. She was studying journalism, and by God she could write the stuff. She saw her future clearly: the trench coat, the note pads, the bylines, the sense of doing something.

  And what was she doing now? Ruining herself with alcohol, wallowing in the knowledge of her reputation, and utterly unable to come to terms with the aching love and desperate anger she felt toward her brothers and her father—-toward everyone, in feet, who’d shared in her disgraced and disappointed life. “Such a waste,” she whispered aloud to her own reflection. “Such a sinful waste.”

  She stepped into the kitchen and hesitated. William Milford, the patriarch of the family and a strong, unyielding man of the land, sat alone with a mug of black coffee. She looked at this man—her father—-who had spent most of his seventy years being successful and respected, and who now looked broken and hollow. He looked up at her, Ms face set in cold contempt. Alethea forced a smile. “’Morning, Dad.”

  He didn’t reply. She shrugged.

  Outside, Ward Milford climbed out of Ms patrol car and entered the kitchen. “Hello, Alethea. How’s it going, Dad?”

  “Damn squatters tore some siding right off the back of the milk barn.”

  “How much they get?”

  “Why?” asked Will Milford, with a sarcasm he found harder and harder to keep out of his voice, even when talking to Ms own children. “You gonna do something about it?”

  Ward hesitated. He knew only too well his father’s now-archaic feelings about the rights of property owners; he understood the old man’s rage at being so helpless is the end. He sympathized, as well, with the squatters, internal exiles kept in constant motion by the harassment of the authorities. “What can I do, Dad? Want me to go around checking who’s got pieces of our barn sticking out of their campfires?”

  “You think it’s okay for the government to steal the land,” William Milford grumbled. “You probably think it’s okay for the squatters to rip the damn house down for firewood.”

  “You know I don’t. I’ll look into it.” He stared at Ms father, waiting for a response. There was none.

  The old man stared stubbornly out the window at the battered bams, rusty silos, and barren winter fields.

  Alet
hea slipped past her father into the hallway, and Ward, sensing a moment when brother and sister might comfort each other, followed her.

  “You been cryin” or drinMn’?” he said, instantly sympathetic.

  “Cryin’ while drinkin’.” Her face was flushed, her eyes red. “You have to be real coordinated to be able to do it. Kinda like chewing gum and kissing.”

  Amanda Bradford, fully awake at last, joined her children in the kitchen. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her lithe and almost girlish body stood in painful contrast to her taut and careworn face. Amanda had once had a classic cheerleader sort of prettiness; with age had come a more substantial beauty tempered by sorrow and perhaps too much awareness.

  As Amanda entered the kitchen, Jackie was stuffing her books into her backpack. Scott, her “little” brother by a year, was wolfing down a double-decker sandwich of toast, fried eggs, and ham. Scott was dark-haired and handsome like his father. At six-four, he was a budding basketball star in the orange and black Milford High letter jacket.

  “Where’d the ham come from?” Amanda asked.

  “I swiped it from the training table,” Scott said.

  “They’ve got to keep the jocks healthy,” Jackie said disdainfully.

  Amanda no longer minded the eternal bickering between her two children; at its best, she thought, it was a minor art form.

  “You shouldn’t steal,” she said, helping herself to a bite of ham. “Boy, that’s good.” She sighed. “Jackie, want some moral support at your tryouts this afternoon?”

  “Okay, if you don’t say anything.”

  Amanda walked her daughter to the door. “You’re a strange kid—you don’t want to be criticized by your own mother.” Jackie pulled on her parka. “Be good,” Amanda said, straightening her daughter’s collar.

  “Yeah, give ’em hell, Jack,” Scott called. “Just don’t get pregnant.”

  “Jerk,” Jackie called, and ran to her bike.

  Scott left a moment later, still munching on his sandwich. Amanda trailed after him, waving his parka.