stitched cowboy boots with a barely concealed distaste.
“You know I don’t believe in regional fashions, dear, however ironically worn. Clothes are critical signifiers. I don’t want my outfits proclaiming some false allegiance to Faithland, of all places.”
Phillipa Gertslin taught popular culture at Howard Zinn University—what used to be known as UT Austin, before the Agnostica-Faithland split. Her last published book had been titled
“Now, please,” Phillipa continued, “if you could just set the table without offering any more fashion critiques…? I’ve got to nuke these duck tortillas.”
Grumbling, Amy took down a stack of four clunky, hand-fired plates from the cupboard. Each plate weighed as much as brick.
“Why can’t we get a set of those faunchy e-paper plates? The ones that let you eyeball content while you eat?”
“Paper? I’d rather eat off the backs of exploited migrant laborers. Who knows what horrid toxins might leach out of that e-paper? It’s only been around for a couple of years. I know the government says it’s safe, but I hope you realize just how far you can trust our elected officials—even our Agnostica politicians need to be kept on a short rein”
Amy set the weighty plates down on the table with enough force to have shattered a lesser vessel. “And that’s another thing. How come you and Dad are always talking trash about our government? Whatever happened to, like, patriotism in this house? ‘Agnostica Number One! My half of the USA right or wrong!’”
Phillipa dumped a bag of blue-corn chips into a handwoven Guatemalan basket and carried it to the table. She looked at her daughter as if Amy had suddenly sprouted bat wings. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. You know that no one in Agnostica talks or thinks that way. It’s only in Faithland that you’ll hear people shouting those mindless chants. Our mode of government is based on rationalism and skepticism. It’s only through constant questioning of the empirical that—”
Amy rattled a tray of silverware to cover the sound of her mother’s voice. “La, la, la, la! Can’t hear the semiotic discourse!”
Phillipa didn’t pursue the argument, but just frowned and shook her head, then went back to her meal preparations.
A short time later, the Gertslin family assembled for their evening meal. From his seat across the table from Amy, her brother, Hilary, sneered and said, “Hey, shitkicker, pass the tortillas.”
Hilary was a smart, wiry tweener who, unlike the others in his family, boasted a natural skin coloration the shade of a dusky plum. Hilary had been adopted by the Gertslins when he was just months old, an African child orphaned during the post-Mugabe chaos in Zimbabwe. He was as much a product of Agnostica as Batch or Phillipa, even down to his given name. Hilary had been named after the politician Hilary Clinton, who, during the year of little Hilary’s birth, 2010, had been elected the first president of Agnostica.
Batch objected now to his son’s language. “Hilary, I warned you about using that form of address.”
“Aw, Dad, it’s a compliment. Isn’t that right, Amy? You’re proud of being a country girl, aren’t you? Barefoot and pregnant all the time? Double-wide trailer living?
Amy shoved her chair backwards and stood up, stiff as a vibrating board. “That did it! I don’t have to sit here and be insulted! None of you understand me at all! This bleeding-heart family sucks! This tight-ass city sucks! This whole peachy, super-sensitive, liberal
Fleeing to hide her tears, Amy ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Several hours of sobbing and listening to Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack, a long interval during which no one came to console her, convinced Amy of one thing.
She had to run away to Faithland right now. Defect. She couldn’t stand to wait a year till she was legally an adult.
But where would she go in that unknown land?
The answer dawned on her almost immediately.
Nashville. The home and source of the music she loved.
Gretchen Wilson was still alive, Amy knew, though the woman had retired from the music business some years ago. Maybe Amy could track her down in Nashville, become her
Amy began packing. She stuffed a few extra clothes into a backpack, along with her favorite plush toy, an alligator bearing a stitched tourist motto from the Everglades, which she had found discarded in a thrift store and named Mr. Taxes. From the closet she grabbed a black cowboy hat. The hat was still crisp and unworn, since too many local people made fun of Amy when she appeared in public wearing it. But where she was going, it would command respect.
While waiting until the rest of her family had gone to sleep, Amy studied road maps on her pocket ViewMaster. It looked like she could pick up Route 35 North to Oklahoma City, then catch Route 40 West and barrel straight on into Nashville.
That is, if she could get past the border.
Two AM, and everyone in the Gertslin home was asleep save Amy.
Out on the lawn, Amy looked back without regret at the only home she had ever known. Goodbye to its solar cells and rain-collecting system, its weedy lawn planted in a water-conserving mix of native plants, its faded political poster from the recent election: RE-ELECT STERLING FOR MAYOR.
Red River Street was quiet. Amy felt as if the neighborhood was already a ghostly figment of her past.
A few blocks to the west, she knew she could catch one of the hydrogen-fueled mass-transit buses heading north to the city limits, one step closer to the border; the bus-stop was adjacent to the former State House, in a safe neighborhood.
When Austin joined Agnostica in the 2010 division of the USA, renaming itself New Austin, the Texas state capitol had perforce relocated to Houston. Nowadays, the former home of the governor served as the Waldrop Museum and Cultural Center.
Amy had to wait only a few minutes at the bus shelter. It was a little scary to be out alone this late at night, but luckily no one bothered her. The most frightening person she saw was a man with patches of armadillo skin grafted onto his bare arms, and he seemed more concerned with reading a manga on his ViewMaster than in bothering a skinny teenager.
Finally onboard her bus, Amy tried to imagine how she would get past the Customs and Immigration officials at the limits of New Austin.
When the partitioning of the country was first being adjudicated, New Austin had managed to claim an irregular circle of land some sixty miles in diameter around the urban core. This allowed the city to retain many natural attractions and resources, not the least of which was The Salt Lick BBQ Restaurant in Driftwood. Texas could afford to be magnanimous: the chunk was the only tiny bite that Agnostica had managed to take out of the mammoth, imperturbable Faithland corpus of the state.
Route 35 exited New Austin territory at the small burg named Georgetown. There, Amy would have to undergo scrutiny by two sets of inspectors, those of both Agnostica and Faithland. They would ask to see her ID and inquire about her reasons for leaving one country and entering another, demanding her destination and intentions. First, she’d be busted for being an unescorted minor. Even if she could get around that, she had no definite arrangements in Nashville or en route to offer as legitimate support for her trip.
Well, no point in worrying about that now. With the innate optimism of her years, convinced of the rightness of her quest, Amy assumed some option would present itself when she got to the border.
So she sat back, relaxed, and played some George Jones.
At the outskirts of New Austin proper, Amy had to change to the long-range bus for Georgetown, which she did without trouble. Luckily, she had her life savings—five hundred and ten euros—available via her personal chopcard. Amy wasn’t sure what the exchange rate for Agnostica euros versus Faithland dollars was at the moment, but she hoped it was favorable.
She fell asleep for the last twenty miles of the bus ride, her head cradled on Mr. Taxes, awaking only when the driver called out via the onboard PA, “End of the line, folks.”
Only half-awake, Amy stumbled out.
