Woman on the Edge of Time

“Sure.” She gathered up her shoes and smock and followed Luciente. The water oozed from the earth perhaps half a mile farther on, near the edge of the patch of woods. It was dark brown and she feared it, but her mouth was sore and dry, her throat burned again. They put a beer bottle and a jar in the small stream to soak as clean as they could, so that after she had drunk her fill, slowly as Luciente warned her, she could carry away water.

Blackberries grew in great arching brambles at the wood’s far edge. Only some were ripe and fell into her hand with their fat juicy weight when she touched them. They were sweet and winy in her mouth. After she had eaten and drunk and picked more for later, Luciente pointed out bouncing Bet to her, pretty pale pink flowers that looked as if they might have escaped from a garden. “Use the leaves for soap.”

“I have real soap.” She rescued the scrap from the pocket of the denim jacket and finally cleaned herself slowly but thoroughly in the brown water of the spring.

Then Luciente showed her half a dozen other weeds she could eat, all of which she took as samples obediently but without enthusiasm. As dusk thickened, so did the cloud of mosquitoes settling over her. They left Luciente alone. “They know I’m not real,” she said. “I hope it wasn’t a bad idea to bring Dawn through. Dawn is a little bent to personal heroics. I should’ve consulted my corns … .

“It’s twilight. Do you think we could risk a small fire?”

“Anything. Look at my arms and legs!” Her body was lumpy with bites. The bugs were settling on her in colonies, like rows of oil derricks pumping away. She and Luciente moved a distance from the spring, back among the pines, but the mosquitoes followed them. Finally she tore western New York from the map and together with dry fallen branches and twigs, they set a fire that caught on the fourth match. “You can roast your potatoes.”

“I forgot them.” She settled against a tree. “Maybe they’ve stopped looking for me. If I was them, I’d watch Dolly’s. After all, I have to go to her for money.”

“This money complicates your lives.”

“But you have those credits.”

Luciente settled down cross‑legged across the fire. “Luxuries are scarce. There is only so much Bordeaux, so much caviar, so much Altiplano gray cheese. Necessities are not scarce. We grow enough food. But there are things no one needs that people enjoy. We try to spread them around. In our region we each get a fixed number of luxury credits. We can spend them all on some really rare luxury–a bottle of great old wine like a 2098 vintage Port for my birthday–or we can have many little treats. We can even save them up for two years. In Parra’s region, Tejas del Sur, they do it by productivity. They have a fixed number of credits for the region, and villages are allotted points by how much above their quota they produce. We think they’ll get tired of that system. It creates rivalry.”

“I think I’d spend my credits on clothes.”

“But that makes no sense, Connie. The costumes circulate. You take them out as you want them. The flimsies anybody can design. A flimsy is as good as you can imagine it to be.”

“But aren’t some clothes better than others?”

“We all have warm coats and good rain gear. Work clothes that wear well. The costumes are labors of love people give to the community when they want to make something pretty. Sometimes I want to dress up beautiful. Other times I want to be funny. Sometimes I want to body a fantasy, an idea, a dream. Sometimes I want to recall an ancestor, or express a truth about myself–that, say, I am a stubborn goat in character.” Luciente laughed.

“What do you use your credits for, then? Those carved drums I saw you carrying?”

“No, no! Those were made for me by Otter for my birthday. Me, I like Port. And I love the sweet German wine, especially Mosels and Saars and Ruwers. And I like to give presents. Mostly I make them, which is twice a gift, as we say. But sometimes I like to give something pretty and exotic. I can always think of more things to spend credits on than I have credits.”

“Don’t you wish you could have more?”

“As we become more productive, worldwide, as we put less energy into repairing past damages, then we’ll put more energy into producing the unnecessary–the delightful, the pleasing. It will happen.”

Connie smiled, poking the fire idly with a stick that charred at the end. “I ask you about I and you answer me about We.”

“Connie, we are born screaming Ow and I! The gift is in growing to care, to connect, to cooperate. Everything we learn aims to make us feel strong in ourselves, connected to all living. At home.”

“I’m at home here only because you helped me.”

“But this too is a human landscape. Look, someone planted these white pines. Regularly spaced. Look closely at the ground. Beneath the needles you can see marks of old furrows. Plowed ground. As long before you as I am living after you, crops grew here. The earth lives, if it isn’t murdered.”

“Tonight I have to move on. I can’t stay here.”