Other Earths (collection)

While Lucy consulted her wizard and Riel dawdled at a stall that sold cheap jewelry, I walked through thin crowds along one of the market streets leading off the square and, after a bout of token haggling, bought a U.S. army-issue Colt .45 and six clips of ammo from an arms dealer. Though old, the weapon appeared to be in good working order. The dealer encouraged me to test fire it, but I was afraid that I might be reported—I had no conception of the legalities attendant upon buying a gun. I tucked the pistol into my waist, beneath my shirt, and hustled back toward the square. A block along from the arms dealer, I stopped dead in my tracks. Standing in the doorway of a building on the corner was a bearded man dressed identically to me—shorts, sandals, a black T-shirt—and with an identical (as far as I could determine from a distance of forty feet) face and build. I imagined that we wore the identical stunned expression. We locked gazes for a moment, and as I hurried toward him, he ducked into the interior of the building. I raced after him, through the door and into the midst of twenty or thirty people slurping noodles at wooden tables, nearly knocking over a waitress who carried a load of dirty dishes. Her irritation gave way to confusion. She glanced toward the kitchen, then at me, and that told me all I needed to know. I ran through the kitchen and out onto the street behind the restaurant. There was scant pedestrian traffic—some kids kicking around a soccer ball, two women talking, a man looking under the hood of a beat-up yellow Toyota—and no sign of my double. I walked along in the direction of the square, peering into doorways, my excitement draining. What could we have said to each other, anyway? We could have compared notes on Cradleness, on what it meant to be a Cradle, for all the good that would do. Possibly I could have learned something new about the delta, but nothing, I thought, that would have greatly illuminated its central mystery. It had been a strange thing to see myself, yet now, at a remove from the moment, I questioned whether he had actually been my double. A bearded man in shorts and a black T-shirt at a distance of forty feet who had fled when approached by a stranger on the run: I told myself he might have been anyone.

In my absence, the center of the square had been taken over by an elephant. It was kneeling, a heap of fresh dung close by its hindquarters, and Riel stood at its side, like a princess beside a weathered castle wall, talking to a boy in shorts, twelve or thirteen, mounted behind the animal’s neck. A farmer’s son, I thought, who had ridden the family tractor into town to show it off. I found a stall adjacent to Lucy’s wizard that sold coffee sweetened with condensed milk and sat on a rickety folding chair and watched Riel trying to entice the boy into giving her a ride (he kept wagging his finger no, and scowling), while the elephant flexed its trunk and blinked away flies, presenting an image of stuporous discontent.

The crowds were thinner in the square than they had been on the side streets, so Riel was the object of much attention, especially from the male stallkeepers. I sipped my coffee and thought about the gun pushing against my pelvic bone, imagining it had been snatched from the hand of a dead officer during the Vietnam conflict and wondering how many lives it had snuffed out. It had been an impulse buy, although the impulse was informed by a lifelong fear of and fascination with guns and was given a quasi-rational basis by the idea that I might need it once we reached the delta. It was a steel phallus, a social ill, all those things that left-wing politics said it was; yet its cold touch warmed me and added weight to my purpose, enabling the fantasy that my mission there was important.

Lucy finished her consultation and joined me for coffee. “It’s going to rain,” she said.

The clouds had gone from a nickel color to dark gray brushed with charcoal; the muggy heat and the smell of the elephant’s dung had thickened. I laid an envelope on the table by Lucy’s hand.

“What’s this?” she asked, fingering it.

“Severance pay,” I said.

She met my eyes steadily, and I thought she would object or demand an explanation; but she only looked away, her face neutral.

“So what did he tell you, your guy? What’s in your stars?” I asked, breaking a silence.

“Obviously not a trip south,” she said. “Oh, well. Like they say, all good things …”

“I hope it’s been good.”

She appeared to rebound. “It’s been an adventure …and good.” She grinned. “No complaints on this end.”

“It’s about time you went home and kick-started that career, don’t you think?”

“Advice? And from someone who should know better?” she said merrily. “I shall have to reevaluate my impression of you.”

“Just a thought.”