Low Port Part 12

Thought what the burner did had hurt, but what she did was sheer agony. Except when she finished, the pain was gone. Just a dull ache.

"It will still take a few days to heal completely. Don't lift anything heavy."

I offered the Oligari again.

She smiled. Didn't take it. "Keep it, Mario. You earned it." Wasn't sure I wanted it. Make me top snark in Highport, for sure, but there's more 'n being top snark that way. Besides, Ferica or someone would make me a mark, so long as I had it.

I handed it to her. "Wouldn't be right." Wouldn't have been.

She understood... in a way. "What would you like?"

"A few creds... and I'd like to see the pilot's s.h.i.+p lift off."

"We'll have to hurry."

So they let me come, up three levels, and on the superguide to the middle of Heaven concourse. I'd never been there. No one sees it except angels, and pilgrims, the saved souls only once. They escorted me all the way through the portal and to the transfer deck.

Everyone stopped there.

The pilot I'd found looked at me with those luminous green eyes.

Knew she'd never be back. Not to Highport. She'd seen too much, and the angels would find some way to keep her on Heaven. She knew it, too. Didn't say anything, but I could tell.

The angels behind us reinforced that.

Pilot looked toward the transdeck. "I have to preflight."

"Have a good trip." Didn't know what else to say.

Stood with the lead angel and watched the screen for a good stan before the golden needle flared, vanished into overs.p.a.ce.

Then I turned.

Head angel looked at me. "There are five hundred creds in your account, Mario, and an open pa.s.sage to Heaven. Open your whole life. No matter what."

Could tell she meant it. "Thank you. Not ready for that."

"We know."

Neither of us spoke as she escorted me back to the main concourse, left me there not a hundred meters from Moyra. Wondered if that was an accident. Didn't think so.

Waited out of sight of the kiosk for another half-stan, till just before Moyra's s.h.i.+ft ended. Then sauntered up.

"Said I'd be here. Your choice. Any place in town-upper level."

Her mouth opened. Then she closed it and smiled.

Moyra and I-we slipped through the rain so quick that the star drops didn't touch either of us, water or light.

Kept running, but not from Highport. Come morning, we'd be back, same as always. I was a snark. Couldn't be one anywhere else.

Still ... couldn't, wouldn't get the image out of my mind. The proud and tall lady, beautiful, as all angels are, with the darkness of h.e.l.l behind those green, green eyes. Standing on the transdeck, call it the dock to Heaven, a place she'd never see again, screen behind her showing stars falling around her... and not knowing that she'd already missed life.

Moyra and I had that.

FIND A PIN.

Ru Emerson

It started out as a good day. I had a little money that the lady at the mission had given me the night before-enough for sausage biscuits and c.o.kes at McDonald's. That put Momma in a good enough mood that she didn't notice all the people giving us the kinda looks street people like us get. She even took her meds without a protest for once, was.h.i.+ng them down with the last of her c.o.ke.

I've always been the only one who could ever get the meds down Momma. She says at the Salem State Hospital, they had to put her in restraints, like she's proud of it. She went in, for the first time, when I was six, and stayed in for six months. She was in and out after that, until they closed the hospitals.

It was nice and warm for a change, when we got outside McDonald's. Time to go see if we could find any cans or bottles to recycle at a nickle a can. I had the two plastic Safeway bags I always carry, and handed one to Momma. She found three beer cans right away, tucked in the bushes outside the McDonald's, and I found four along the side of outside the tracks.

Then I saw sun glinting off a slender bit of metal. A straight- pin. One of the long, fancy ones with a bright red head on it. Funny place to find a pin, but then, you can find just about anything on the streets, if you're used to looking. I pinched it off the ground between my thumb and forefinger and threaded it into my collar. The old doggerel came to me, then. "Find a pin, pick it up," I chanted. Momma slapped at my hand and said, "Lisa Marie, you drop that pin right now! You're gonna poke yourself, swell up and get typhoid and die!"

There never was a good time to argue with Momma, so I just said, "No I won't, on account of the pointy bit is buried in my s.h.i.+rt collar and besides, Momma, you and I both got our teta.n.u.s boosters at the Free Clinic last month, remember?"

Momma shrugged and turned away. "I dint get no shot. n.o.body cares if I live or not."

Old turf, not worth discussing. It worries me that she doesn't remember things very good, sometimes. The pharmacist at the clinic, where we get her meds, told me we should get her checked in case it's Alzheimer's, but what good would it do if I knew? l spotted something sparkling in the long gra.s.s behind the train tracks. "Momma, think you got a can or two over there." I pointed.

Momma went over to paw through the tall gra.s.s, and came up hooting. Four loose cans-and a twelve pack box that was totally fall. "Hey, Lisa Marie, honey, we're rich!" she giggled.

"Hey, Momma, we're always rich, right?" I replied.

That was what Dad used to say. He and Momma married right out of high school. Her folks-Nona and Popsy-were so pleased their girl was gonna be a wife and mother. His folks always thought Dad married beneath him and ruined his life, on account of he was gonna be a lawyer, like his Dad. Dad always laughed that off-like he did most things in life. "Got you, got Mom, what else do I need?" he say. And, "My folks got their priorities wrong, you remember that, Lisa, honey. Money doesn't count as much as family does. But if we got each other, we're always rich."

I remember our first apartment-the one where I was born. I had my own bedroom, and the wallpaper was pale blue with pink roses on it The street was quiet and nice and I could play in the yard, anytime I wanted I only learned later on that Momma and Dad were Living on The Edge even back then, on account of she didn't have job skills and was getting a little odd anyway, and he bad a bad heart from having rheumatic fever as a teenager. Reason we bad a good apartment was because Nona and Popsy helped with the rent.

I looked at Momma and rubbed the pin head thoughtfully. Back when she was sewing for me, Momma would never buy that kind, because they cost too much. Pins like that were "spendy", she said. She got material from the bargain shelves at Penneys, but she picked careful, and she never needed a pattern. And I was probably the best dressed kid in my cla.s.s all the way through grade school.

Momma had to give up sewing about the time I went into junior high. We had to take the scissors and even the pins away from her, like we had to hide all the kitchen knives, because she kept trying to cut herself.

Momma gathered up her cans, and I did the math. "We got enough, Momma," I said. "Let's go to the Safeway and cash them in." We headed west along 12th Street and wound up at the small Safeway store, where they had a set of fancy new outside machines for people to deposit their own cans, then go in with a ticket to get paid. Momma liked the machines a lot; liked the funny noises they made when the took a can and crunched it. I put my bag of cans where she could get it, and looked around. Lot of times, people make Momma nervy, especially little kids.

A big, old faded copper colored LTD rolled slowly along toward the store as Momma started shoving cans into the nearest machine, mumbling to herself. A thinnish woman in bright red clothes, with even redder hair, got out, looked at Momma and at me and smiled at me, to my surprise. After all, I don't exactly look like your normal office worker.

I was an office worker. Had been Not that many years back I had to quit because Dad was gone thanks to his last heart attack, and Momma-well, she wasn't up to being able to cope by herself. I left the job before they could fire me. Momma scared the receptionist, they said .

"Honey," the lady said then, "you are the answer to a prayer."

She got in the back seat of that big old car and brought out an enormous black plastic garbage bag. "I have been carrying this around for days, and just don't have the time to run them through the machine. Would you like them?"

I gazed at the bag in awe. There must have been six dollars worth of cans in there. I managed a smile then, and held out my hand for it. "Thank you very much, ma'am," I said. She just got back in her big old car and took off, waving a hand as she turned onto the street.

It turned out to be one hundred forty four pop cans, the limit for one day's return. Momma and I split them up and it took a long time to get them all in. I took the receipts and rubbed the head of that pin. Luck for sure.

When Popsy lost his s.h.i.+rt in that big stock market crash, they couldn't help us any more. We moved to a smaller apartment, then an even smaller one, where I had to sleep on the couch. Momma wouldn't let me play outside after dark there. Dad started having more heart problems and couldn't work much. We wound up in one of those courts on Portland Road, near where a lot of hookers worked. Each time, it seemed like things couldn't possibly get worse, but they always did. When Dad died that year, I had left school so I could work, but with him not there to care for Mo-well we had enough money left to keep that shabby little apartment for six months. After that, there wasn't anywhere to go except Dad's old Subaru station wagon. One day, when we were off scrounging cans and things, someone called and had the car towed, so after that, it was the Mission or under the bridge.

Things weren't really so bad for us, most of the time. Not really. At this point, there really wasn't any farther down to go, and I'd gotten used to things the way they were. Sometimes there'd be a little money, but if there wasn't, we could get meals at the Mission or one of the churches. One of the really fancy churches downtown would let us use their shower a couple days a week. Momma and I slept under the bridge, where a lot of people do, but we didn't have to worry about guys trying something because Ed Henderson let everyone know he looked out for us, and Ed's a big guy. Whenever I could afford for a washer and the little box of soap, old Hattie Moran did laundry for herself, me and Momma since I couldn't take Momma in a Laundromat cause people stared and Momma'd start ranting and cussing.

Momma-I was all she had, and that was that.

Inside the Safeway, the nice clerk was working checkout, instead of the snooty one who looks at us like we smell bad, and won't put the money in my hand. We wound up with almost eight dollars, so I bought Momma a little bag of Cheetos, since she likes those a lot, and got me one of nacho flavored chips. I waited until we got back outside to store the rest of the money in the cloth zip bag I have pinned to my bra, so no one can take it.

"I wanna go watch the ducks," Momma announced, clutching her snack two handed. "There's a bench, isn't there? We can sit and watch the ducks and I can eat these."

"That's a great idea, Momma," I said, and I was pleased because she hardly ever does want to do things just trails along grumbling when I suggest something. "It'll be cooler down by the creek anyway." Momma walks pretty fast when she gets an idea in her head, so I was pretty hot and winded by the time we got to the other side of downtown. It was after lunch hour, so there were just a couple of people walking by. We found an empty bench in the shade, right next to the water. Just below us, two green headed mallards, and a she duck with some halfgrown chicks were paddling around.

Momma got comfortable, tore open her packet and began eating Cheetos, eyes fixed on the ducks. I had about ten of my chips, then stowed the rest in the carry bag I keep my stuff in, so I'd have something if I got hungry later. Momma ate every last crumb of hers and gave me a silly grin. "I got orange fingers, Lisa Marie, " she said, and waggled them at me.

"You can wash 'em in the fountain, probably," I told her. She carefully licked all the crumbly stuff off them first. just then, an idea came to me. "Know what, Momma?" I said. "We got a lot of money here, for us. I think today's the day we get to ride the carousel."

Her eyes got round, but then she shook her head. "Honey, we can't afford that. It's a dollar each, and there won't be some lady giving us a bag of cans like that-ever again probably."

I tipped my collar out and rubbed the head of that dressmaker pin. "Maybe not-but maybe it'll happen. But you'd like to, wouldn't you?" I knew she would. We were all the time going down to that new Riverfront Park where they built that fancy new carousel, and she'd just stand there listening to the music and staring at it like anything. She was gonna shake her head again, I could tell, so I said, "I'd really love to do it, Momma."

Well, that was all it took. It was only about three blocks from where we were, thank goodness, because Momma walked even faster to get to that park.

There were maybe five cars in the parking lot, and a big silver SUV pulled in just as we got there. I pulled two paper dollars out of my zip bag and walked up to the ticket booth. "Two, please," I said, and hoped there wasn't gonna be some one stuffy back there who'd find a reason we couldn't ride.

The luck was still there, though I almost wished I'd never thought of the carousel when I realized it was a guy I'd gone to high school with. He stared, and I know I did. "Lisa, is that you?" he asked finally.

I nodded, stunned and horribly embarra.s.sed. I knew he could tell right now what we were and where we lived. "Bobby, what're you doing here" I asked as Momma walked slowly into the big room where the carousel lived, her eyes just s.h.i.+ning.

"Oh, I did a lot of the volunteer work when they were build-ing this," he waved a hand at it, "and I just stayed on. It suits me." It did that, Bobby Rayburn'd never been what you'd call ambitious. "Here," he added, and he pushed four tickets along the tile counter, along with my money.

"I can't-!" I began, but he shook his head.

"Ladies' day," he said with that funny little smile of his. I could hear the woman behind me grumbling about the delay, and one of her kids whining, so I just smiled back, picked up my stuff and went on in. I heard the woman say something to Bobby about 'people like that' in here at a family attraction, but Bobby just laughed and said, "They're nice ladies, and their money's as good as anyone's." I guess she didn't know what to say to that, because she shut up and took her kids around the other side of the carousel to wait for it to stop.

Momma took her tickets, looked at them and said, "Honey, that's half your money, you can't do that!"

"He gave'em to me," I told her. She looked at the tickets, at me, then reached out and rubbed the head of that pin.

"Lucky you found that," she said, and as the carousel slowed, "I wanna ride the zebra. Think your luck'll let me get it before someone else does?"

"Bet it will," I said. And sure enough, it did. The woman with the kids gave us a dirty look as her three little whiners found horses way away from us. Momma was too happy to notice. She stroked the zebra's neck, and actually smiled at the ticket man when he came around to collect them.

It was a really nice ride, and I was sorry when it was over. A little dizzy, too. Momma needed me to hold onto her arm as we left the building and started for the sidewalk. The woman with the kids had bought two rides apiece for all of them. I couldn't imagine having that much money, let alone that much to spend on rides.

Her little boy started whining when she got off, though, and she had a hard grip on his hand. "Brian Jared, I told you we did not have that much time. We have to get your brother at soccer camp." She got the kids past Momma and me at double speed and shooed them into the back seat of that big old silver SUV, and already had her phone in her hand before she got in and shut the driver's door.

"See, Momma," I said. "Life isn't so bad for us, now, is it? We could be rus.h.i.+ng here and there like that woman."

"All them whiny kids," Momma said, but she was still in a good mood from the carousel ride and didn't go on about them. She came around to touch the head of my pin again. "Sure is funny about that. How long do you think the luck'll last?"

I shrugged. "Could be a long time, or maybe just today." We reached the curb and I pushed the b.u.t.ton for the Walk sign.

"Better find another then pretty quick," Momma said, her eyes moving along the gutter and out on the street. "Hey!" she called out then. "Lookit!" I looked where she was pointing. She by golly had found a pin, some little round circle thing, that had maybe been lost out of a car, out near the lane divider line. Before I realized what she was up to, she darted out to pick it up.

The car in the middle lane managed to stop and the ones in the right lane were pretty far back. Unfortunately. Because the busy woman in the silver SUV didn't even bother to stop for the red light; she just saw there was room for her big van thing, and she goosed it around the corner. Momma went sailing like a rag doll, clear over the thing, and came down in the crosswalk.

The SUV tried to take off, they told me later, but a pickup truck blocked her way. I didn't see anything but Momma. There wasn't any blood to speak of and she looked like she was sleeping, except for a sc.r.a.pe on her cheek. I wanted to go touch her, but I somehow couldn't move.

I could hear. The woman yelling at somebody, "My children are going to be scarred by this for life! That horrid, dirty old woman must have done that on purpose! No one's children should have to see something like that!"

Bobby spoke up from just behind me. "Ma'am, you ask Lisa here about that. That was her mother you hit." Well, that shut her up. Bobby got me to sit on a bench, and got me some water. The ambulance people came right away and Momma was really gone then. Then the cops and the newspaper people came. I hadn't meant to say anything. I didn't think I could. But the gray haired cop was nice and the reporter sympathetic, and somehow, a lot came out. About me and Momma, and Living on the Edge. One Edge after another, all my life.

There was a big article in the paper the next day, I guess. Ed told me about it. I felt embarra.s.sed by all the fuss, and never did read it. I felt guilty, not stopping Momma somehow, but Ed talked to me about that, too. "Maybe it was a blessing for her, Lisa, honey." He'd picked it up from Momma calling me that. "You gave her a really great day, she had special treats and finally got to ride that merry go round and she couldn't have known a thing when that big old station wagon hit her." He rubbed the head of that dressmaker pin. "So maybe it was good luck in a way, for her. She was a mighty unhappy lady, most of her life. And this is no place for a young girl like you. Now, maybe you can have a chance at getting out from under this bridge." I shook my head at that, but he just said, "Lisa, honey, I keep telling you, you're too darn pretty to be a troll."

Well, that made me laugh, like it always did. But I couldn't think about that, not just yet. It felt disloyal to Momma, like I'd just been waiting for her to die so I could get a real life. Besides, I didn't know where I'd start.

Turned out, I didn't need to do a thing. After that article came out, people suddenly wanted to do things to help. A lawyer came down to the Mission and told the lady there that he'd handle things for me so that woman couldn't get out of paying for Momma to have a decent funeral and so on. A lady from a helping service came down under the bridge and explained to me and some other people how they got people like us nice clothes and taught us how to go on interviews so we could get work. A couple of people came around to offer me money, just give it to me, but I felt funny about taking what I hadn't earned, so I turned them down.

And I guess the woman with the SUV was feeling kinda shabby about how she'd acted, because the lawyer didn't need to do anything. The woman's insurance paid for a decent, quiet funeral for Momma and burial next to Dad, and she put money in a savings account for me, to use for rent.

It's been a year. I'm working in an office again, filing and answering the phones while I learn how to type, and use a computer again. I'm learning how to just talk to ordinary people again, and how not to feel like I'm an outsider. I've got a room at the YWCA for now, because it's close to work and the library, and I can walk, and I'm right on the bus line if I want to go anywhere else. Don't know that I'll ever want to drive a car, or ever feel I can afford to own one, though I've got money in the bank. I'd like to keep it there, because it keeps The Edge away.

I still wear that dressmaker pin, but on the underside of my s.h.i.+rt collars, where people can't see it. That was in the paper article, Ed told me, and I felt foolish about people knowing that.

Bobby and I see each other now and again, but mostly because I go down and ride the carousel once a month, and think of Momma and how happy she was, perched on that zebra and grinning like she owned the world. Like I said, he's not exactly ambitious, and I figure if I'm not ready to make a lot of friends just yet I'm sure not ready for a boyfriend.

Mostly, I'm just getting used to being responsible for myself. I know The Edge is there. But from now on, I decide how close I get to it.

SAILING TO THE TEMPLE.

Alan Smale

After a summer spent kneeling at temples, the market at Nakasu ichi, where the rivers met, seemed perilously close to Heaven.

Walking through the bustle of cheerful commerce Yajiro saw peasant women selling lengths of colored cloth alongside bearded purveyors of animal hides from the mountains. Each hawker and trader stood on his own bale of straw, shouting his best price over the sea of bamboo hats that boiled around his shoulders. Here were sacks of rice, yellow millet and sorghum; there, baskets of water chestnuts, melons, radishes, and sweet potatoes. Women knelt by their cooking pots, tending to their fires and calling the exotic names of broths thick with noodles and dumplings. The quickness and exuberance of life sparkled off every bra.s.s cup and cheap bauble.

Yajiro experienced a moment of perfect clarity. Maybe he belonged here, and not on his knees on a gra.s.s mat before a sterile golden altar. Even Buddha spent time as a prince, a man of the world, and a husband before choosing a life of holiness.