Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

Seeing her expression, he put his arm around her. “It’s not gone forever, Jelly. Okay? Maybe they’ll send it.”

When she had dried her eyes, the bus had left the road and was creep­ing up a narrow winding drive between trees. It slowed for a curve, slowed more. Turned again. Through the windshield she glimpsed a big house. A man in a tweed jacket stood in what seemed to be its back doorway, smok­ing a pipe.

The driver coughed and spat. “This here’s your papa’s place,” he an­nounced. “He’ll be around somewhere, and glad to see you. You be good kids so he’s not sorry he was glad, you hear?”

Jill nodded.

The bus coasted to a stop and its door opened. “This’s where you get out. Don’t you forget them bags.”

She would not have forgotten hers without the reminder. It held all the worldly goods she had been allowed to take, and she picked it up without difficulty. Her brother preceded her out of the bus carrying his own bag, and the door shut behind them.

She stared at the back door of the house. It was closed. “Dad was here,” she said. “I saw him.”

“I didn’t,” her brother said.

“He was standing in the door waiting for us.”

Her brother shrugged. “Maybe the phone rang.”

Behind them the bus backed up, pulled forward, backed a second time, and started down the drive. Jill waved. “Wait! Wait a minute!”

If its driver heard her, there was no sign of it.

“We ought to go in the house.” Her brother strode away. “He might be in there waiting for us.”

“Maybe it’s locked.” Reluctantly, Jill followed him.

It was not, and was not even closed enough to latch. There were leaves on the floor of the big kitchen, as though the door had stood open for hours while the wind blew. Jill pushed it solidly shut behind her.

“He might be” (her brother’s voice cracked) “in front.”

“If he was talking on the phone, we’d hear him.”

“Not if the other person was talking.” Her brother had already seen enough of the kitchen. “Come on.”

She did not. There was an electric stove whose burners glowed crimson then fiery scarlet, a refrigerator containing a pound of cheese and two bot­tles of beer, and a pantry full of cans. There were dishes, pots, pans, knives, spoons, and forks in plenty.

Her brother returned. “The TV’s on in the front room, but there’s no­body there.”

“Dad has to be around somewhere,” Jill said. “I saw him.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, I did.”

She followed her brother down a wide hall with high, dark windows on one side, past the big door to a big dining room where no one sat eating, and into a living room in which half a dozen drivers might have parked half a dozen buses, full of sunshine. “A man did this,” she said, looking around.

“Did what?”

“In here. A man picked out this furniture, the rugs, and everything.”

Her brother pointed. “Have a look over there. There’s a chair made out of horns. I think that’s hot.”

She nodded. “So do I. Only I wouldn’t have bought it. A room is—it’s a frame, and the people in it are the pictures.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not.” She shook her head in self-defense.

“You’re saying Dad got this stuff to make him look good.”

“To make him look right. You can’t make people look good. If they don’t, they don’t. That’s all there is to it. But you can make them look right and that’s more important. Everybody looks right in the right place. If you had a picture of Dad—”

“I don’t.”

“If you did. And you were going to get a frame for it. The man in the frame store says take any of these you want. Would you take a pretty black one with silver flowers?”

“Heck no!”

“There you are. But I’d like a picture of me in a frame like that.”

Her brother smiled. “I’ll do it someday, Jelly. Did you notice the TV?”

She nodded. “I saw it as soon as we came in. Only you can’t hear what that man’s saying, because it’s on mute.”

“So he could talk on the phone, maybe.”

“In another room?” The telephone was on an end table near the televi­sion; she lifted the receiver and held it to her ear.

“What’s wrong? Could you hear him?”

“No.” Gently, she returned the receiver to its cradle. “There’s no noise at all. It’s not hooked up.”

“He’s not on a phone in another room, then.”

It was not logical, but she felt too drained to argue.

“I don’t think he’s here at all,” her brother said.

“The TV is on.” She sat down in a chair, bare waxed wood and brown-and-orange cushions. “Did you turn on these lights?”

Her brother shook his head.

“Besides, I saw him. He was standing in the door.”

“Okay.” Her brother was silent for a moment. He was tall and blond, like Dad, with a face that was already beginning to discover that it had been made for seriousness. “I’d have heard the car if he went away. I’ve been lis­ tening for something like that.”

“So have I.” She sensed, although she did not say, that there was a pres­ence in this empty house that made you listen. Listen, listen. All the time.

MUTE, said the screen, and made no sound.

“I’d like to know what that man on the TV’s saying,” she told her brother. “It’s on mute, and I can’t find the remote. I looked.”

She said nothing, snuggling back against the brown-and-orange cushion and staring at the screen. The chair made her feel that she was enclosed by some defence, however small.

“Want me to change the channel?”

“You said you couldn’t find the changer.”

“There’s buttons.” He swung back a hinged panel at the side of the screen. “On and off. Channel up and channel down, volume up and volume down. Only no Mute button.”

“We don’t need a Mute button,” she whispered, “we need an Unmute button.”

“Want to change the channel? Look.”

The next channel was a gray screen with wavy lines and the yellow word mute in one corner, but the next one after it had a pretty, friendly looking woman sitting at a table and talking. The yellow MUTE was in the corner of her screen, too. She had a very sharp yellow pencil in her hands, and she played with it as she talked.

Jill wished that she would write something instead, but she did not.

The next channel showed an almost empty street, and the yellow MUTE. The street was not quite empty because two people, a man and a woman, were lying down in it. They did not move.

“You want to watch this?”

Jill shook her head. “Go back to the man Dad was watching.”

“The first one?”

She nodded, and channels flicked past.

“You like—” Her brother froze in mid-sentence. Seconds crept past, fearful and somehow guilty.

“I—” Jill began.

“Shhh! Someone’s walking around upstairs. Hear it?” Her brother dashed out of the room.

She, who had heard nothing, murmured to herself, “I really don’t like him at all. But he talks slower than the woman, and I think maybe I can learn to read his lips if I watch him long enough.”

She tried, and searched for the control between times.