THE ROAD
CASPER, WYOMING, 2009
As she watched from the corner, the nine-year-old Max— a foreign figure in this residential neighborhood, her thin blue-gray Manticore smock flapping in winter wind, her bare feet planted on the cold concrete of a sidewalk— tried to comprehend what the young child was up to…
But the genetically bred soldier-in-the-making simply had no idea what the female child was doing, rolling a ball of snow across the white yard, making a bigger ball of it with her every step.
Focusing in, Max looked closely at the child across the street— a girl whose long black hair peeked out from beneath a red stocking cap. A little older than Max, at least a year or two, the girl had full lips, a short nose, and wide-set blue eyes beneath long, butterfly lashes.
Mesmerized, as if witnessing a dream, Max watched as the girl rolled the ball of snow back the other way. The round white thing came up almost to the girl's waist now, and Max still couldn't figure out what this kid thought she was doing.
After backing up to the corner and ducking behind a car, Max watched the girl for a moment, then slipped across the street, a blue-gray shadow. Now on the same side of the block as the girl, Max edged behind the corner house without being seen, and took off across the backyards, heading for the third house, in the front yard of which the girl was playing. This snow-rolling behavior Max had never seen before— what sort of strategy was this?— and she needed a closer look.
When Max rounded the third house and crept up to a spot behind a large evergreen to watch, the girl was still at work in the snow. To Max, her nightshirt and bare feet seemed suddenly inconsequential, compared to the wild-colored clothes of the other girl: red stocking cap, green mittens, pink parka, blue jeans, and canary yellow boots.
Max stared in rapt fascination as the girl in the red stocking cap decided this ball was big enough, abandoned it in the middle of the yard, and moved down near the sidewalk to start another. The girl packed snow onto the new ball until it was too big to hold, then she rolled it as she had the last one.
When the child was finished, the second sphere of snow was only slightly smaller than the one next to it, and it too came nearly to her waist. The girl tried to lift it up to set it on top of the first ball, but couldn't quite get it off the ground.
Knowing she should retreat and avoid any contact, well aware she needed shelter, food, and warmer apparel, wanting to keep moving, Max nonetheless remained frozen with something other than the cold: something about this girl kept her here, kept Max watching…
No matter how hard the girl in the red cap tried, it seemed, she couldn't raise the second ball on top of the first. Without really realizing what she was doing, Max stepped out from behind the evergreen and moved in to assist the other child.
One of the few human instincts that remained strong in her, despite Manticore's best efforts, was the need to help her “brothers and sisters”… and this girl, so close to her own age, touched that sibling cord within the X5- unit.
When Max appeared, the girl in the red cap stood up straight and her mouth fell open in obvious surprise. Max didn't say a word, just moved to the other side of the ball and put her hands underneath it. The snow felt cold against her hands, yet it was oddly bracing, not unpleasant at all, and the bare skin on her arms, where the sleeves of the nightshirt rode up, began goose-pimpling.
The girl in the red cap grasped the plan immediately and moved to help. Together, the two little girls— for Max was, for all her training, despite the genetic tampering, a little girl, too— lifted the new globe of snow up on top of the first one.
“Hold it there for a minute,” the girl in the red cap asked, panting, not able to keep up with Max, “willya?”
Max nodded dutifully, keeping her hands on the ball to keep it from rolling off.
Catching her breath, the girl in the cap said, “I've… I've got to… pack some snow around it… to keep it from falling off. Y'know?”
Max nodded again, even though she had no idea what was going on. Finally, she asked, “What is the object?”
The girl in the cap looked at Max curiously. “Huh?”
“What are you doing here? What purpose is served?”
“Purpose?… We're building a snowman, silly.”
“Oh. A kind of… decoy?”
The little girl frowned. “Does Frosty here look like a duck to you?”
“No!… Is this is a statue?”
The other little girl obviously had never thought of it that way. “Well… yeah. Sort of.”
“But the statue will melt. It is impermanent.”
“Of course he'll melt, someday. But not while it's this cold.”
“If the statue will melt, what's the purpose?”
“It's fun!”
This word had been heard before by Max, but represented a foreign concept; such was the nature of much Manticore training.
“Aren't you having fun, helping?” the girl in the cap asked, her breath pluming. “What's your name, anyway?”
“Max.”
“Max? Isn't that a boy's name?”
“No. I'm a girl.”
“Duh! I can see that… I'm Lucy. Lucy Barrett.” The girl kept packing snow as they conversed, smoothing and securing the snow orbs. Max, a quick learner, imitated the action.
“Lucy is your name. Hello, Lucy.”
“Hello, Max. Aren't you cold?”
Max shrugged again. “A little.”
The girl in the cap explained that “Frosty” now needed a head; Max pitched in and they fashioned a smaller ball.
“Are you sick, Max?”
“Sick?”
“You look like you walked out of a hospital or somethin'.”
“Oh. No. I am well.”
“Good,” Lucy said, putting finishing touches on the third ball. “You live around here?”
Max shook her head, helping lift the “head” onto the snow statue.
“Are you staying with relatives, too, Max?”
“Relatives?”
“Where's your mom?
mom would be really mad if I came outside without my coat, my boots, my mittens, or my stocking cap.”
“Mom?” Max braced the final ball as Lucy patted it into place, until it felt more solid, like it wouldn't move if she were to let go. Max didn't let go, though.
“You do have a mom don't you? Or do you live with your dad?”
“Dad?”
Lucy removed a carrot from one pocket of her winter coat and two lumps of coal from another; she made a face out of them— Max understood that instantly— and then they stood and looked at their work of art, considering it carefully.
The older girl looked carefully at Max, too, and seemed only to be half kidding when she asked, “You aren't a refugee from a loony bin, are you?”
“Loony bin?”
The girl in the cap frowned. “Listen, are you from another country?”
