more.
One exception to this rule was Ethan Duplessix.
At first, I believed, he began hanging around Djamala solely because he saw me there. Peeved by how I had escaped his taunts, he looked for some new angle from which to attack me, relishing the helplessness of his old nemesis.
But as I continued to ignore the slobby criminal slacker, failing to give him any satisfaction, his frustrated focus turned naturally to what the children were actually doing. My lack of standing as any kind of legal guardian to anyone except, at even the widest stretch of the term, Izzy, meant that I could not prevent the children from talking to him.
They answered Ethan’s questions respectfully and completely at first, and I could see interest building in his self-serving brain, as he rotated the facts this way and that, seeking some advantage for himself. But then the children grew tired of his gawking and cut him off.
“We have too much work to do. You’ve got to go now.”
“Please, Mr. Duplessix, just leave us alone.”
I watched Ethan’s expression change from greedy curiosity to anger. He actually threatened the children.
“You damn kids! You need to share! Or else someone’ll just take what you’ve got!”
I was surprised at the fervor of Ethan’s interest in Djamala. Maybe something about the dream project had actually touched a decent, imaginative part of his soul. But whatever the case, his threats gave me a valid excuse to hustle him off.
“You can’t keep me away, Hedges! I’ll be back!”
Izzy stood by my side, watching Ethan’s retreat.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said.
“I’m not worried, Parrish. Djamala can protect itself.”
The sleeping arrangements in the tent Nia, Izzy and I shared involved a hanging blanket down the middle of the tent, to give both Izzy and us adults some privacy. Nia and I had pushed two cots together on our side and lashed them together to make a double bed. But even with a folded blanket atop the wooden bar down the middle of the makeshift bed, I woke up several times a night, as I instinctively tried to snuggle Nia and encountered the hard obstacle. Nia, smaller, slept fine on her side of the double cots.
The night after the incident with Ethan, I woke up as usual in the small hours of the morning. Something urged me to get up. I left the cot and stepped around the hanging barrier to check on Izzy.
Her cot was empty, only blankets holding a ghostly imprint of her small form.
I was just on the point of mounting a general alarm when she slipped back into the tent, clad in pajamas and dew-wet sneakers.
My presence startled her, but she quickly recovered, and smiled guiltlessly.
“Bathroom call?” I whispered.
Izzy never lied. “No. Just checking on Djamala. It’s safe now. Today we finished the Iron Grotto. Just in time.”
“That’s good. Back to sleep now.”
Ethan Duplessix had never missed a meal in his life. But the morning after Izzy’s nocturnal inspection of Djamala, he was nowhere to be seen at any of the three breakfast shifts. Likewise for lunch. When he failed to show at super, I went to D-30.
Ethan’s sparse possessions remained behind, but the man himself was not there. I reported his absence to Hannah Lawes.
“Please don’t concern yourself unnecessarily, Mr. Hedges. I’m sure Mr. Duplessix will turn up soon. He probably spent the night in intimate circumstances with someone.”
“Ethan? I didn’t realize the camp boasted any female trolls.”
“Now, now, Mr. Hedges, that’s most ungenerous of you.”
Ethan did not surface the next day, or the day after that, and was eventually marked a runaway.
The third week of October brought the dreaded announcement. Lulled by the gentle autumnal weather, the unvarying routines of the camp, and by the lack of any foreshadowings, the citizens of Femaville 29 were completely unprepared for the impact.
A general order to assemble outside by the buses greeted every diner at breakfast. Shortly before noon, a thousand refugees, clad in their donated coats and sweaters and jackets, shuffled their feet on the field that doubled as parking lot, breath pluming in the October chill. The ranks of buses remained as before, save for one unwelcome difference.
The motors of the buses were all idling, drivers behind their steering wheels.
The bureaucrats had assembled on a small raised platform. I saw Hannah Lawes in the front, holding a loud- hailer. Her booming voice assailed us.
“It’s time now for your relocation. You’ve had a fair and lawful amount of time to choose your destination, but have failed to take advantage of this opportunity. Now your government has done so for you. Please board the buses in an orderly fashion. Your possessions will follow later.”
“Where are we going?” someone called out.
Imperious, Hannah Lawes answered, “You’ll find out when you arrive.”
Indignation and confusion bloomed in the crowd. A contradictory babble began to mount heavenward. Hannah Lawes said nothing more immediately. I assumed she was waiting for the chaotic reaction to burn itself out, leaving the refugees sheepishly ready to obey.
But she hadn’t countered on the children intervening.
A massed juvenile shriek brought silence in its wake. There was nothing wrong with the children gathered on the edges of the crowd, as evidenced by their nervous smiles. But their tactic had certainly succeeded in drawing everyone’s attention.
Izzy was up front of her peers, and she shouted now, her young voice proud and confident.
“Follow us! We’ve made a new home for everyone!”
The children turned as one and began trotting away toward Djamala.
For a frozen moment, none of the adults made a move. Then, a man and woman—Vonique’s parents—set out after the children.
Their departure catalyzed a mad general desperate rush, toward a great impossible unknown that could only be better than the certainty offered by FEMA.
Nia had been standing by my side, but she was swept away. I caught a last glimpse of her smiling, shining face as she looked back for a moment over her shoulder. Then the crowd carried her off.
I found myself hesitating. How could I face the inevitable crushing disappointment of the children, myself, and everyone else when their desperate hopes were met by a metropolis of sticks and stones and pebbles? Being there when it happened, seeing all the hurt, crestfallen faces at the instant they were forced to acknowledge defeat, would be sheer torture. Why not just wait here for their predestined return, when we could pretend the mass insanity had never happened, mount the buses and roll off, chastised and broken, to whatever average future was being offered to us?
Hannah Lawes had sidled up to me, loud-hailer held by her side.
“I’m glad to see at least one sensible person here, Mr. Hedges. Congratulations for being a realist.”
Her words, her barely concealed glee and schadenfreude, instantly flipped a switch inside me from off to on, and I sped after my fellow refugees.
Halfway through the encampment, I glanced up to see Djamala looming ahead.
The splendors I had seen in ghostly fashion weeks ago were now magnified and recomplicated across acres of space. A city woven of childish imagination stretched impossibly to the horizon and beyond, its towers and monuments sparkling in the sun.
I left the last tents behind me in time to see the final stragglers entering the streets of Djamala. I heard water splash from fountains, shoes tapping on shale sidewalks, laughter echoing down wide boulevards.
But at the same time, I could see only a memory of myself in a ruined building, gun in hand, confronting a shadow assassin.
Which was reality?
