Universe 8 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Well, if you can shoot pitchurs,” Parthena said, “you can he’p us knock off that new wall banner what you seen on the quiltin’ frame in the rec center. So you c’mon now, Zoe.”

  They were finished in the galley. Parthena led them out of there and down the corridor: seventy-six years old and as straight and skinny as a broom handle.

  “Other work I got this evening,” Jerry said. “If you all will excuse me.” And he zoomed around them in his winged chair and disappeared into a room Zoe hadn’t been in yet. A closetlike alcove between the rec center and the dining room.

  Luther and Toodles were already at the quilting frame when they got there: a monstrous, plastic contraption over which the layer of sewn squares, the synthetic cotton batting, and the underlining had all been tautly spread and whipped down. Zoe had seen this thing—”a Wright brothers plane made of sewing scraps”—during their afternoon songfest, but it had been behind them and partially hidden by a moving screen and no one had volunteered to explain its purpose or its function to her.

  Now the screen had been shoved back against the wall, and Toodles and Luther were sitting at opposite ends of the frame pushing and pulling their needles through the three layers of material. Helen, still wearing her goggles, sat down between them, and Parthena and Zoe took up chairs on the other side of the frame, which was tilted like an aileron. It was 1903, and they were Orville and Wilbur, crazy-quilt pilots at a Kitty Hawk where the sands of time had transmogrified into linoleum tile.

  “Helen,” Zoe blurted, “with those goggles on you look like you’re gonna fly us right out of here—right up to the dome.” Ooops. Was that the right thing to say to a blind person?

  Helen raised her head and stared at Zoe. Straight on, the goggles—or glasses, or binoculars—gave her the look not of a biplane pilot but of an unfriendly outerspace critter. “Aren’t they hideous?” Helen said. “I’d wear them all the time except for the way they look.” And, expertly, she began plunging her own needle into the layers of cloth and forcing it back through.

  Parthena showed Zoe how to do it, giving her a needle and thimble and making her watch her technique. “I taught us all how to quilt—but Paul he don’ like it and use his weekend to think on keepin’ himsef a-live for awways. Jerry he got real bidness to tend to. Otherwise, he ‘most awways here. Now you keep yo’ thumb in that thimble, gal, or that needle it gonna bite you. Look here—”

  Well, Zoe had sewn before and she’d always been pretty handy anyway. Easy, take it easy, she told herself, and pretty soon she was dipping in and digging out as well as any of them, stitching those jaunty, colored squares—yellow, green, and floral-print blue in a step-pin’-’round-the-mountain pattern—to batting and lining alike. Much concentration to begin with, like a pilot taking off; then, the hang of it acquired, free, relaxing flight Nobody talked, not anyone.

  When had she ever felt so serene and at peace? Serene and at peace, yes, but with a tingle of almost physical pleasure throwing off cool little sparks up and down her backbone. The quiet in the room was a part of this pleasure.

  Then Parthena began to talk, but not so that it violated the silence they were working in: “I use to do this up in Bondville, when my son Maynard jes’ a little flea and the dome ain’ even half finished yet. Oh, the wind it blow then, it didn’ have no dome to stop it, and we use these quilts to sleep unner, not to hang up on them ole broke-up plasser walls of ours. I still ‘member how Maynard, when I was workin’, would get himsef up unner the frame—a wooden un my husban’ made—and walk back and fo’th like a sojer so that all you could see was the bump of his head goin’ from one end of that frame to the other, up and down, till it seem he warn’ ever gonna wear out. Laugh? Lord, I use to laugh him into a resentful meanness ‘cause he didn’ unnerstan’ how funny his ole head look.”

  She laughed in a way that made Zoe join her. “Now he got three babies of his own—Georgia, Mack, and Moses—and a wife what can do this good as me; better maybe, she so spry.”

  They quilted for an hour. When they broke off, Parthena insisted that Zoe come back to the dormitory common room and see the “pitchurs of my gran’babies. Shoot, you like pitchurs and babies, don’ you?” So Zoe went. She sat in the easy chair while Parthena, having lowered her bed to an accommodating height, sat like an ebony stork on its edge.

  “This one my pert Georgie,” Parthena said, handing her a picture of a handsome little black girl. “She twelve now and one sassy fas’ chile. She gonna get out of Bondville all by hersef, jes’ on charm and speed.” The two boys were older and a little meaner-looking; they probably had to be. None of them were babies. “I jes’ want you to see I had me a fam’ly ‘fo’ the Phoenix. I ain’ like Luther and po’ Toodles what suffer till they was pas’ sixxy without finin’ a real home. Now, though, they got us an’ we got them—but they come a long road, Zoe, a long road. Jerry, too. Sometimes I jes’ lif up a prayer for how lucky I been.”

  “I never did pray much,” Zoe said, “but I know what the urge is like.” Like loving somebody in a way that didn’t permit you to tell them: Zoe remembered.

  They talked while some of the others got ready for bed. Parthena showed Zoe a set of dentures that had been made for her in 2026; she even made Zoe take them in her hand and examine them as if they were the teeth of an australopithcine. “They clean,” she said. “I ain’ wore ‘em since ‘29. The reason I show ‘em to you is ‘cause they made by Dr. Nettlinger.”

  “Who?”

  “Gee-rard Nettlinger. You ‘member, Zoe. He that fellow what shot Carlo Bitler. Stood up in the middle of the Urban Council meetin’ and shot that tough, holy man. The day I heard that, I took out them dentures and never put ‘em in again. They shoddy-made, anyhow. Only keep ‘em so Maynard can sell ‘em one day. People go all greedy-crazy over doodads what b’long to ‘sassins. People crazy.”

  “Yep,” Zoe agreed. “My daddy said it was the new idolatry.”

  “It idle, awright. Don’ make a mussel-shell worth o’ sense.”

  Then, somehow, their conversation got around to why the original family members had chosen Phoenix—rather than something light like Sweetheart or O’Possum—as the group’s surname. Zoe said she had supposed it was because Atlanta was sometimes called the Phoenix City, having risen again from its own ashes after the Civil War (which Zoe’s grandfather, even in the 1980s, had insisted on calling the War Between the States—as if that made some kind of significant difference). And when the dome went up in that decade linking the old century with the new one, Atlanta had undergone still another incarnation. Were those part of the group’s original reasons?

  “They part of ‘em awright,” Parthena said. “But jes’ part. Another one is, we all come out of our own ashes when we ‘greed to the cov’nant. We all bone again, Zoe, like in Jesus.”

  “Well, I thought that, too, you know. That’s what makes the name so good.”

  “Yeah. But Paul he like it ‘cause the phoenix a ‘Gyp-tian bird what was imortal, you see. It only look like it die, then it spurt back up jes’ as feathery and fine as befo’. He a mean man on that pint, Paul is.”

  “He ought to be happy with the Ortho-Urban Church, then. It says the same sort of thing happens to people after they die.”

  “Ain’ the same, though, Paul say. ‘Cause people do die, no lookin’-like in it, and they don’ get a body back at all. Paul he hung up on the body.”

  “You don’t say? It’s good to know he’s not just a Dirty Old Man.”

  “Oh, he that, too, he sho’ is.” They chuckled together. “But it the other thing keep him thinkin’ and rockin’ and figgerin’. The Phoenix lucky. Mos’ of us still got our mines. But Paul he eighty-some-odd and his been goin’ ever since we marry. Mr. Leland awmos’ didn’ ‘cept him in this program five year back, you see. Res’ of us made him say yes. So Mr. Leland fine’ly ‘cepted him, hopin’ we could haul him back on the road. We done it, too. Pretty much.”

  “Did Paul suggest the name?”
/>
  “No. Maybe. I don’ ‘member zackly. What I do ‘member is that the name fit, it fit fo’ all kinds o’ reasons. One other, and maybe the bes’ un, was a story my gran’daddy tole that his own daddy tole him. It was ‘bout a slave chile, a little gal, what was made to watch the two-year-ole baby of the boss man, the ‘marster’ as gran’daddy say his daddy say.

  “Well, that little baby fell down the steps while the slave gal was watchin’ it: she took her eye away a minute and it bumped down them ole steps and took on a-hollerin’. Scared, you know, but not kilt. Well, when the white mistresses in the house heard this, they took on a-cryin’ and carryin’ on terrible—jes’ like that baby been murdered. They kep’ on till the marster himsef come strollin’ in and axed them what it was. When they tole him, he pick up a board and hit that little slave gal in the head. Kilt her. Then he gathered ‘round him a bunch of niggers (my gran’daddy he tole it this way, now) and ordered ‘em to thow the gal in the river. The gal’s mama begged and prayed and axed him to spare the gal fo’ buryin’, but he paid her no mine and made ‘em thow the chile in.

  “Now this where the story get magical, Zoe. The little girl’s name was Phoebe, and five slaves and the girl’s mama went down to the river with her—the biggest nigger in front, carryin’ little Phoebe with her bloody head hangin’ down, mournful and cold. This big nigger he thew the gal in like the marster order him to, Phoebe’s mama jes’ moanin’ and beatin’ on hersef, and then he walk right in affer the girl and hole himsef unner water till he drown. The others they resolve to do the same. And they do it too, the mama goin’ in las’ and prayin’ to God they all be taken up together.

  “One night later, the white folks from the big house is walkin’ by the river and all at once they see seven small, ugly birds fly up outa the water and go sailin’ straight at the moon. The higher they get, the brighter and purtier and bigger they get too—till at las’ they stop in the sky like stars and stay still over the big house where them white folks live. A new constellation they become, which ewyone on that plantation call the Phoenix—’cep’ this constellation don’ move like it s’posed to but jes’ sit with its wings spread, wide and haughtylike, over the marster’s house.

  “And that the story, Zoe. Jerry he say he never heard of no constellation call the Phoenix. But with that dome up there who gonna ‘member zackly how the sky look? Nobody; not nobody.

  “An’ I believe it still up there somewhere.”

  * * * *

  8 flashforward: at the end of winter

  Almost three old-style months after entering the Geriatrics Hostel, not as patient or prisoner but as a genuine, come-and-go-as-you-please resident, Zoe sat on the roof one evening and recalled the steps of her slow immersion in the Phoenix clan. Supper was eaten: a calming warmth in her stomach and bowels.

  Pretty soon the family would decide. When you’re streaking toward either seventy or eighty—as well as that something else that isn’t death—long courtships are as foolish as whirlwind ones. Three months is plenty to decide in, maybe too much. Anyhow, they were formally going to pass on her, and it might be that in giving her this hour of solitude, this retrospective moment on the darkening rooftop, they were already engaged in the process of their decision. Was it in doubt? And hadn’t they been so engaged all along, every day that Zoe had lived among them sharing their lives?

  One girder-car tonight, and a flight of pigeons wheeling together in great loops in front of a huge, neon Coca-Cola sign.

  Look what had happened in these three old-style months: For one thing, she had found out that the septigamoklans in the Tower weren’t living there as welfare recipients solely, as so many helpless mendicants on the Old Folk Dole Role. Most of them had spent their lives paying into the medicaid and future-secure programs of the city; since 2035, the year young Mr. Leland’s study had begun, the quarterly benefits of all the people in the hostel had been pooled and invested. This was done with permission from the residents, only a scant number of whom denied the UrNu Human Development Commission the legal administration of their estates. And against these holdouts, no penalty at all. In any event, the dividends on these pooled investments and the interest on several well-placed accounts financed the feeding and the sheltering of the residents and even provided them with personal funds to draw on. They also helped remunerate the surviving families of those who came into the study.

  Each family had a budgeter: Helen was the Phoenix budgeter, and, wearing those little, black, vision-assisting binoculars, she kept books like a born-and-bred C.P.A. (which was C.U.A. now, Zoe remembered). Other times, she used her braille-writer. Anyhow, they weren’t dole-riders, the people in the Tower—although Zoe had to admit that the hostel’s system was dependent upon the good offices and business acumen of those who administered their benefits. This drawback was partially offset by the budgeter of each septigamoklan’s having a seat on the Commission Board of Financial Planners, as well as by the judicious appeal to market-forecasting computers.

  Down on Level 3 with Sanders and Melanie, Zoe’s quarterly allotments—only a day or two after the future-secure printout chit arrived—had been eaten up like nutmeg-sprinkled oatmeal. The Nobles garnisheed the entire value of the chit, without even so much as a countersignature, for granting Zoe the privilege of living with them. Only the coming of their child and the prospect of a lump-sum reward from the commission had induced them to hand Zoe over. Just like a prisoner-exchange, or the sale of a decrepit and recalcitrant slave. Yessir, Zoe thought: Sold down the river. But a river out of which it was possible to fly like a sleek bird, dripping light as if it were water. An old bird, Zoe was; a bird of fire being reborn in the Lethe of Sanders and Melanie’s forgetfulness and neglect.

  “A pox on self-pity,” Zoe said aloud, surprising herself. Overhead, the torchlit girder-car had almost reached the acme of the dome.

  Well, what else? What else? Lots of things. She had met members of other septigamoklans, the O’Possums and the Cadillacs and the Graypanthers and oh! all the others, too. There’d been a party one Saturday night in the garden, with food and music and silly paper decorations. Hostel attendants had closed the patio windows and pulled the acoustical draperies in the intensive-care rooms, and everyone else had gone to town. Young Mr. Leland, at their invitation, had been there, and nobody but Paul of all the Phoenix went to bed before 4 a.m. Sometime after midnight Toodles led everybody in a joyful, cacophonous version of “Ef Ya Gotta Zotta.”

  Then there were Sunday afternoons, alone with Paul or Luther or maybe, just maybe, one of the girls. During the week, field trips to the Atlanta Museum of Arts (“Boring as hell,” said Paul) and Consolidated Rich’s and the pedestrian-park flea markets. Two different excursions to the new theatre-in-the-round opera house, where they had watched a couple of interesting, council-sanctioned hologramic movies. They were OK, sort of plotless and artsy, but OK. Back in their own fourth-floor suite, though, they could show old-fashioned, two-dimensional movies; and just since Zoe had been there, the Phoenix had held a Rock Hudson festival and a mock seminar in the “Aesthetic of Late Twentieth-century X-rated Cinema,” during which Jerry had turned off the sound tracks and lectured to quite humorous effect with the aid of a stop-action button and a pointer.

  After one such lecture, when the rooftop was theirs, Luther and Zoe had laid out a croquet course; and, except for Jerry, in 23° C. weather (the internal meteorologists had given them one or two cold days, though) they had all played without their clothes! Nude, as Helen said. And that had been one of those rare occasions not requiring meticulous attention to detail—quilting, putting away dishes, keeping books—when Helen wore her goggle-bin-oculars. And, not counting the pulse-cued bracelet, only the goggle-binoculars. The idea, lifted from an old book of short stories, had been Toodles’, but Paul had given it a vigorous seconding. And so Zoe, like a girl going skinny-dipping in the before-the-dome countryside, shed her paper gown, her underthings, her inhibitions, and let the temperate air swaddle he
r sensitive flesh and her every self-conscious movement. Much merriment. And no repugnance for their blotched and lignifying bodies; instead, a strange tenderness bubbling under the surface merriment.

  What, after all, did the bunions, and the varicosities, and the fleshy folds signify? Zoe could answer that: the onset of age and their emphatic peoplehood, male and female alike. Finally, that day, she forgot the sensuous stirrings of the dome winds, lost herself in the game, and became extremely angry when Parthena sent her ball careening off into an unplayable position. Yessir, that had been an all-fun day.