sight.
His friend had become an environmentalist after a trip to China. 'There are almost no trees left there at all now,' he'd told Dennison. 'They've just used them all up. Trees clean the environment by absorbing the toxins from carbon dioxide and acid rain. Without them, the water and air become too toxic and people start to die off from liver cancer. China has an incredibly high mortality rate due to liver cancer.
'That's going to happen here, Chris. That's what's going to happen in the Amazon. It's going to happen all over the world.'
Dennison had felt bad, enough so that he contributed some money to a couple of relevant causes, but his concern hadn't lasted. His work with Social Services took too much out of him to leave much energy for other concerns, no matter how worthy.
As though reading his mind, Dorothy said, 'And now imagine a world with no more children.'
Dennison thought they might be halfway there. So many of the children he dealt with were more like miniature adults than the kids he remembered growing up with. But then he and his peers hadn't had to try to survive on the streets, foraging out of trash cans, maybe taking care of a junkie parent.
'I have a great concern for Mother Earth,' Dorothy said. 'We have gravely mistreated her. But when we speak of the environment and the depletion of resources, we sometimes forget that our greatest resource is our children.
'My people have a word to describe the moment when all is in harmony— we call it Beauty. But Beauty can find no foothold in despair. If we mean to reclaim our Mother Earth from the ills that plague her, we must not forget our own children. We must work on many levels, walk many wheels, that lives may be spared— the lives of people, and the lives of all those other species with whom we share the world. Our contributions, no matter how small they might appear, carry an equal importance, for they will all contribute to the harmony that allows the world to walk the wheel of Beauty.'
She closed her eyes and fell silent. Dennison sat quietly beside her for a time.
'What... what advice would you give me?' he asked finally.
Dorothy shrugged. Her eyes remained closed.
'You must do what you believe is right,' she said. 'We have inside of each of us a spirit, and that spirit alone knows what it is that we should or should not do.'
'I've got to think about all of this,' Dennison said.
'That would be a good thing,' Dorothy told him. She opened her eyes suddenly, piercing him with her gaze. 'But hold onto your feelings of foolishness,' she added. 'Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.'
***
Dennison found an empty bench when he left City Hall. He sat down and cradled his face in his hands. His headache had returned, but that wasn't what was disturbing him. He'd found himself agreeing with the Kickaha elder. He also thought he understood what Debra had been telling him. The concepts weren't suspect— only the part he had to play in them.
He felt like one of those biblical prophets, requiring the proof of a burning bush or some other miracle before they'd go on with the task required of them. If he could just have the proof that he'd made a real and lasting difference for only one person, that would be enough. But it wasn't going to come.
The people he helped continued to live hand to mouth because there was no other way for them to live. Caught up in a recession that showed no sign of letting up, they considered themselves lucky just to be surviving.
And that was why his decision was going to have to stand. He'd given of himself, above and beyond what the job require, for years. The empty cold feeling inside told him that he had nothing left to give. It was time to call Pete and see about that shipping business. He wasn't sure he could bring Pete's enthusiasm to it, but he'd do his best.
But first he owed Debra a call: Yeah, I went and saw the elder, she was a wonderful woman, I understand what you were saying, but I haven't changed my mind. He knew he'd be closing the door on the possibility of a relationship with her, but then he didn't feel he had even that much of himself to give someone anyway.
He dug a quarter out of his pocket and went to the pay phone on the corner. But when he dialed the number she'd given him, he got a recorded message: 'I'm sorry, but the number you have dialed is no longer in service.'
'Shit,' he said, stepping back from the phone.
An older woman, laden down with shopping bags, gave him a disapproving glare.
'Sorry,' he muttered.
Flagging down a cab, he gave the driver the address that Debra had written down to accompany her bogus number, then settled back in his seat.
***
The building was a worn, brownstone tenement, indistinguishable from every other one on the block. They all had the same tired face to turn to the world. Refuse collected against their steps, graffiti on the walls, cheap curtains in the windows when there were any at all. Walking up the steps, the smell of urine and body odor was strong in the air. A drunk lay sleeping just inside the small foyer.
Dennison stepped over him and went up to the second floor. He knocked on the door that had a number matching the one Debra had written down for him. After a moment or two, the door opened to the length of its chain and a woman as worn down as the building itself was looking at him.
'What do you want?'
Dennison had been expecting an utter stranger, but the woman had enough of a family resemblance to Debra that he thought maybe his rescuing angel really did live here. Looking past the lines that worry and despair had left on the woman's face, he realized that she was about his own age. Too young to be Debra's mother. Maybe her sister?
'Are you... uh, Mrs. Eisenstadt?' he asked, trying the only name he had.
'Who wants to know?'
'My name's Chris Dennison. I'm here to see Debra.'
The woman's eyes narrowed with suspicion. 'What'd she do now?'
'Nothing. That is, she gave me some help yesterday and I just wanted to thank her.'
The suspicion didn't leave the woman's features. 'Debra! she shouted over her shoulder. Turning back to Dennison, she added, 'I've got lots of neighbors. You try anything funny, I'll give a scream that'll have them down here so fast you won't know if you're coming or going.
Dennison doubted that. In a place like this, people would just mind their own business. It wouldn't matter if somebody was getting murdered next door.
'I'm not here to cause trouble,' he said.
'Deb-
She shut the door and Dennison could hear her unfastening the chain. When she opened the door once more, it swung open to its full width. Dennison looked down the hall behind the woman and saw a little girl of perhaps nine coming slowly down the hallway, head lowered, gaze on the floor.
'I thought you told me you were in school yesterday,' the woman said to her.
The girl's gaze never lifted. 'I was.'
She spoke barely above a whisper.
'Man here says you were helping him— doing what, I'd like to know.' She turned from her daughter back to Dennison. 'Maybe you want to tell me, mister?'
The girl looked at him then. He saw the grey-green eyes first, the features that might one day grow into ones similar to those of the woman he'd met yesterday, though couldn't be her. The discrepancy of years was too vast. Then he saw the bruises. One eye blackened. The right side of her jaw swollen. She seemed to favor one leg as well.
His training kept him silent. If he said something too soon, he wouldn't learn a thing. First he had to give the woman enough room to hang herself.
'This is Debra Eisenstadt?' he asked.
'What, you need to see her birth certificate?'
