The bark of gunfire awakens Hana from a dry sleep -- the kind of arid slumber that breeds contempt, that takes a burst of gunfire in the middle of the night and intellectualizes it, tempers it, twists it into an analytical act of stark awareness:
Two bursts. No retort. Warning shots from the east. Guard stations, Wolf and Chestnut. Seven men and four women led by McHaney. He's a good man, the only one in camp who has any kind of military training, eight years in the Army Reserves, even though it was before the Water Wars. No need to panic, Hana. Just some bastard trying to infiltrate camp...probably.
Hana can't decide what's worse, the sleeping, the waking, or the wondering.
She rolls off her cot. The planks creak beneath her feet. Poppa stirs. Funny how he can sleep through a firefight and yet the sound of Hana's footsteps in the night, sometimes as silent as a whisper, or the sound of her relieving herself in the tin bowl, an almost inaudible tinkle, causes him to stir.
"Hana?" he mumbles.
"It's nothing, Poppa, go back to sleep."
He does. Poppa is good like that. He can adjust to anything -- a broken-down shack he insists upon calling "home," the gruel these people call food, water rationing so restrictive they're allowed to bathe but once a week, and then with nothing more than a damp cloth. "All in a day," Poppa likes to say. Never a complaint, never an outburst of rage or even the slightest indication of the pain he's feeling -- must be feeling because Hana feels it, too. And she is only a sixteen-year-old girl. Surely it's worse for Poppa -- Poppa, who has lost so much, even his wife.
Another burst of gunfire. Again, from the east, but farther away this time. Hana hopes it isn't a chase. A chase means someone has gotten into camp and managed to snatch something (most likely food or water) and that someone (most likely one of their own) might be injured or killed.
Poppa begins snoring. When Poppa snores, Hana cannot sleep. Not because of the noise. It's the smell that disturbs her. When Poppa snores he smells old, infirm, and Hana cannot pretend to ignore it.
Hana goes as quietly as she can to the table, sits down, and lights the oil lamp. She checks her watch: three AM. The air is so dry it's almost brittle. Her throat is parched. There is no relief. She won't be allocated her first water of the day until her guard duty begins. If she could sweat, she would, but it's so hot, always so hot, her body is too thirsty to sweat.
Two more gunshots. Separate. Distinct. One from the east, the same as the others. A second from the north, where Ansel is patrolling. There will be no more sleep for her tonight. In two hours she has to get up for early rotation anyway.
Hana goes to her duffel bag, removes her poppa's book and a deck of playing cards, then returns to the table. The book and playing cards are the only things they own which are not necessities -- although, for Hana, the book comes close.
The Music of Algorithms, by Ronald Charles Carver -- Poppa.
Ronald Charles Carver was such an intelligent man, an important man. Who is Poppa? A feeble old gentleman whose mind and body have begun to surrender to passing years and severe circumstance. A guard who's so incompetent with a rifle that he's given bullets only in an emergency.
Hana turns to page thirty-four. The example in the book illustrates one of her favorite algorithms: the "insertion sort." She uses it to relax. Hana shuffles the playing cards and deals herself a hand of twenty. She picks up the cards and arranges them in ascending number order, by suit, spades and clubs in one array, diamonds and hearts in another.
Simple. The meditation of insertion sort.
She does it a second time, a third, over and over again -- mixing suits, switching ascending and descending arrays.
Alas, tonight the exercise fails her. Hana's mind returns to the gunshots. Perhaps Ansel has shot a deer, she thinks, craving the meat, but fearful of Ansel's intentions toward her. At the guard meeting, Ansel boasted he would kill a deer "For Hana!" he shouted, hoisting his carbine over his head. Everyone applauded. The community approves of the pairing between Ansel and Hana, as if that should make some difference to her.
She reshuffles the deck and performs the meditation of insertion sort yet again, this time with thirty cards. In the glow of the oil lamp, Hana's mind wanders. She reminds herself that they are lucky for these four miserable walls. It is something she must do constantly -- count her blessings for a poorly-constructed shack, a roof that threatens to collapse, shoes and clothes worn veil-thin, a starvation diet, never-ending thirst, and guard rotation duty in a "defense community."
Memories temper Hana's mood, forced gratitude tinged with bitterness. Memories of the time when Poppa held a full professorship at the prestigious University of Rochester in New York State. Memories of the night he was awarded the Afro-American Community Leader Citation. Back then Poppa lived with his beautiful wife and "darling daughter" in a house that, though not a mansion, still required the services of a maid.
Hana hears footsteps outside their shack. There is a knock on the door. Quiet. Barely perceptible.
A second knock, followed by an excited whisper: "Hana? Open the door --"
Hana closes the book and sighs. Only one person would come calling at this hour. "For God's sake, Ansel," she says, louder than she intends. She glances at her father. His snoring has stopped, but he is still sound asleep. "It's three o'clock in the morning."
"I know, but I saw your lamp. C'mon. Open up. I have news."
Hana goes to the door. "All right. But keep quiet. Poppa is sleeping." Hana unlatches the door and opens it a crack. She becomes suddenly aware that she is wearing only panties and the remnants of a bra that she does not yet fill.
"Stay outside," she says, bracing herself against the door. "I told you, Poppa is sleeping."
Ansel's dark form crowds forward. He is darker than the night, the blackest black man Hana has ever seen. She remembers thinking, cruelly, the first time she saw him, that he reminded her of a lump of coal. It was the night she and Poppa were introduced to the community, shortly after her mother was killed in the crossfire of a renegade attack for water in their old neighborhood. Someone in the camp, a young white man, recognized her father. He'd taken Poppa's class, remembered him from the old days at the University. Only three families out of two dozen in the community were black, back then. They voted her and Poppa in, largely on the young man's recommendation.
Despite herself, Hana is anxious to hear Ansel's news. He has an ear for gossip, and is always asking questions of everyone and anyone, even strangers. This is how the community learns much of its news. Where are the Water Wars heaviest? Is there a front moving north? Is the National Army trying to push back an offensive? Who has been killed? Someone we know? When? Where? Why? How? Ask Ansel.
"We've captured a man trying to sneak into camp," Ansel whispers excitedly through the narrow crack in the door.
"No!" replies Hana. "Why? What was he after?"
"I don't know. McHaney is questioning him now. I slipped away to come and tell you." He smiles. Ansel is all teeth and eyes against the blackness of his skin and the impenetrable night. He tries to move closer, his foot prying open the door. He is a big boy -- a man, now -- eighteen years old and thick as a mountain summit. "God, Hana, you're beautiful."
Hana edges farther behind the door. Sometimes she feels as if Ansel can see right through her. She hates this. She will never pair with him.
"Go away." She kicks back his foot and slams the door. Hana is holding her breath. It's the stink she hates, Ansel's stink. He smells like a mangy farm animal. Everyone does, even her. But some animals stink worse than others.
"I'll let you know when I find out more," Ansel says, withdrawing. His footsteps recede into the hot wind, the dry trees, the pitted earth, the sleeping night that will soon blink wide awake with the fiery eye of the morning sun.
Hana leans her back against the door. Why is she trembling?
"Hana?" says Poppa.
"Yes, Poppa?"
"Where's the tin? I need to urinate."
"I'll get it for you."
"Hana?"
"Yes, Poppa?"
"I hear music."
"You're dreaming."
"No. I do hear music," he says. "Really."
She listens, but hears nothing -- nothing but the deep silence of a lifeless night. Hana can't remember the last time she heard music.
"Close your eyes and rest, Poppa," she whispers. "You don't have to get up for another two hours."
By the time Hana returns with the tin bowl, her father has fallen asleep.
The next evening, when Hana comes off guard duty, Ansel is waiting. He wants to tell her the whole story of what happened the previous night. She is hot and tired, and needs to be alone -- except for Poppa, of course.
But Ansel insists, and Hana acquiesces.
An old white man showed up at the eastern perimeter, (Ansel begins, sitting closer to her than necessary). The old man was dressed in rags, but wearing a brand new pair of shoes. He had this beat up guitar slung over his shoulder. The damned fool, who calls himself Old Robert, claimed to be a "bluesman," whatever that is, and said he's willing to play his guitar and sing songs for food and water and a roof over his head, for however long the community wants him to stay around.
McHaney didn't believe him. People don't just wander the countryside anymore unless they're crazy, liars, thieves, or most likely all three.
McHaney questioned him for five hours. He asked about the new shoes -- Where did they come from? How did he get them? He tried to get the old man to admit that he stole them, or killed for them, but all the old man would say is that the shoes were payment from a garrison he played for, over near Fort Niagara. He did tell McHaney that the fort was in trouble, under almost constant siege from water raiders who become more brazen as the days grow longer, hotter, and the summer sun burns away even the remote possibility of rain. According to Old Robert, the army can't keep all of the forts manned anymore. Word is that some of the more distant outposts will be abandoned. Of course If the outposts fall, local camps like ours must become more vigilant.
Ansel cuts his story short when he sees the concern on Hana's face. Perhaps he does not want her to worry. He tells her, quickly, how McHaney finally decided that the old man was harmless enough and that maybe the council leaders ought to decide his fate.
"I can't believe it," Hana says when Ansel has finished. "I can't believe McHaney didn't just turn him away."
"It gets worse," replies Ansel. "McHaney gave the old man some bread and a cup of water to hold him over until the council leaders could get together."
"Water?" Hana shouts. "Water!" She slams the butt of her carbine into the dry dirt. "Has McHaney lost his mind?"
"Maybe. Or maybe the old man deserves it. You haven't heard him play. He's good."
Hana stares at Ansel, an accusing stare that makes him turn away, as if he has been slapped. "How do you know?" she asks.
"I heard him play this afternoon," he says quietly, unable to look her in the eye. "While you were on guard duty, the council met to discuss the matter. Old Robert played some songs for them, and they decided he could stay."
"No!" Hana is furious. She feels the heat rise to her head. She might as well be on fire, she is so hot and dry and irritated. "My father and I suffered through three interviews with those snobs, and then were forced to wait two weeks for a decision. Now some old, stinking, useless beggar comes along --"
"Hana, the council leaders are only allowing him to stay for a while, to play some music. That's all. Why are you so upset? They thought we would enjoy the distraction."
"Distraction? Distractions get people killed, Ansel."
"He really is good."
"Do you think I care how good he is? Damn it, Ansel, you don't know anything! You're just a stupid child! You'll always be a stupid child!" She storms off, kicking chunks of dirt in front of her, gritting her teeth against the burning sun that scorches her face, and against something else that burns deep inside -- like hot stones in her belly, the poison of a sand snake, or a wound from a dull blade -- ripping at her skin, tearing at her gut, screaming of intrusion, infusion, infection...
The night denies her sleep.
Lying in bed, awake, Hana is amazed at how her eyes have adjusted to the darkness since she and Poppa joined this community. How often, in the darkness, does she find herself staring at the walls of the shack, at its single clapboard window, noticing the spiders and the flies that gather there? Some nights she examines Poppa's wood sculptures scattered about the room -- small, skinny branches hacked into incompetent whittlings that defy description, many of them unfinished, although it is difficult to tell which are completed and which are not.
Hana is tired, of course. She is always tired. She simply cannot sleep.
Rolling off her cot, Hana goes to her duffel bag and takes out her deck of playing cards, and Poppa's book. There are times when she cannot make the connection between Ronald Charles Carver, the name embossed on the cover of the text book, and Poppa, the man who is her father. The two have moved so far apart. Were they ever the same person? Is Poppa the same man who so eloquently, so effortlessly, defined polynomials, exponentials, Fibonacci numbers? It doesn't seem possible.
Hana opens the book and flips through the pages. She decides to practice the heapsort. Using the appropriate number of cards, she creates a binary tree and a stack array. She begins to build a heap, or "heapify," sliding the array cards into the binary set, producing what she believes is a workable algorithm. She follows the example set forth in Poppa's (Carver's?) text. Hana does not fully understand the heapsort, as she does not understand so many things in the book, but she has given up asking him to explain any of it. He can't. He looks at the book and smiles and shrugs and says he doesn't remember, or can't concentrate, or -- saddest of all -- doesn't care. It hurts Hana to see Poppa so bewildered by his past accomplishments, by his own ingenuity, reduced to mindlessly whittling dry branches to excercise his once vibrant mind.
But the heapsort, it seems to Hana, carries a certain significance. She likes that a "constant" array is stored outside its input; the sort is "manageable", Poppa writes, "inherently controllable."
Constant. Manageable. Inherently controllable. None of these words or phrases apply to her life.
Poppa stirs in his sleep. He is restless tonight. There is a lot of gunfire. More than usual. More than there should be.
"Hana?"
"Yes, Poppa?"
"The music, do you hear it?"
"There's no music. Go to sleep."
"I hear music."
"You need your rest."
"Your mother, my sweet, sweet angel, used to sing beautiful songs, songs with no words."
Hana rests her elbows on Poppa's book, and sighs. She bites her tongue not to snap at him. She isn't in the mood to hear stories about the old days, and she hates it when Poppa calls Mother his "sweet angel," as he so often does. Mother is dead, and cannot help Hana with anything, not with a boy like Ansel wanting to be a man, not with taking care of Poppa, not with all the anger burning inside her.
Sweet Angel? Like hell.
"Sometimes, late at night," Poppa continues, "when she thought I was sound asleep, your mother's footsteps would wake me, and I would listen very carefully to the way she walked from the kitchen to the living room and out onto the porch, the floor boards creaking beneath her feet, and then, if I listened long enough, I would hear her voice, the voice of an angel, high and bright and cool like autumn gales cutting across an open field, like wind chimes praying to the night birds, and they'd answer her, Hana, sometimes, the birds would, they'd answer her just as if she was one of them...sweet, sweet, angel..."
Poppa's voice trails off, and he begins snoring again. Hana's fists are clenched so tightly her nails bite into her skin. The pain, she decides, is pleasant enough in a place like this.
And then she hears the music for the first time -- a sound so soft she thinks it might be more in her mind than in her ears, so gentle she can't define it. But it blossoms slowly into the sound of a few simple guitar notes sailing on the night air, alluring, magical in the way they flirt with her consciousness. Hana tries to capture the music in her mind, but finds she can't quite pull it all together -- and suddenly it's gone. The music is gone. Perhaps she has not heard it at all.
A knock sounds at the door. "Hana? It's me, Ansel. Open up."
"What do you want?"
"I brought some water. I thought you might like a few sips."
Ansel has tried this tack before. Hana has always refused him. She does not want to feel beholden. But tonight she goes to the door. She doesn't even think about it. Maybe she is tired of the constant thirst, or maybe she is angry at the council or at an old man who is suddenly awarded privileges she and Poppa have fought for like dogs every day since they fled Rochester, or maybe she's angry at Poppa because sometimes she can't help but feel all of this is his fault, even though she hates herself for thinking it. It doesn't matter. Thirst is thirst, and Hana is fed up with it.
She opens the door, steps outside, and quietly closes the latch behind her. Ansel, for a brief moment, looks surprised, but he is mostly pleased. Hana can see his white-toothed grin, the gleam in his eyes. Again, her vision penetrates the darkness. Ansel's smell, as always, is repulsive, but tonight Hana will endure it -- for the water.
"I saved some of my ration for you," he says proudly, making sure Hana realizes it is his sacrifice, not the community's. He hands her his canteen.
Hana takes it without thanking him. She wishes she could drink without putting her lips to the canteen...
This thought stops her momentarily.
"Drink," says Ansel. "It is my gift to you. I ask nothing in return."
Of course not. Asking nothing is itself conditional, perhaps even more than putting a price on something. She drinks anyway, letting the warm water trickle down her throat, trying to take pleasure from it.
"There is bad news," says Ansel. "Seems Old Robert was right. Word is Fort Niagara has fallen. The Water Wars are raging like mad up west, in Buffalo."
"What does that mean to the community?"
"Just what you'd expect. Double guard duty for everybody. Fort Niagara is too close for comfort. Communities with supply caches like ours are bound to be challenged."
"When people are desperate," says Hana, "they'll risk everything."
"Don't worry, Hana. I won't let anything happen to you." Ansel reaches out and grabs hold of her hand, the hand gripping the canteen, and stares down into her eyes. Perhaps it is nothing more complicated than his size that frightens Hana. She hadn't thought of that before. It's a silly thought, she knows, but she desperately needs a reason for her fear. Ansel steps forward and circles his arm around the small of her back.
Is it worth it? thinks Hana, for a sip of water? Is it worth --
-- A sudden movement in the darkness startles them -- the shuffling of feet, the snap of a twig -- Ansel leaps like a panther, peeling his carbine off his shoulder, disappearing into the night. Someone is struck -- a pained grunt -- and then Ansel's voice, "Shit, you stupid old fool! What do you think you're doing out here?"
"Who is it?" asks Hana. "Who's there?"
"It's Old Robert," snaps Ansel.
"Old Robert?" Hana moves toward Ansel's voice. She finds him kneeling beside a hunched figure. "Is he hurt?"
"Just winded. I cuffed him in the belly."
"Why did you do that?"
"I did it before I knew it was him. I'm not about to take chances with your safety."
"He's just an old man," says Hana. "How could you be so stupid?"
"It was an honest mistake. What's with you, Hana? A minute ago we were about to-- "
"Never mind that." Ansel is right, of course. Her anger at him is misdirected. Right now, though, she's grateful to the old fool for interrupting a too-private moment. She was stupid, putting herself in that position with Ansel.
"Here," Hana says to Old Robert. She kneels down and puts her hand on his shoulder. "Let me have a look at you."
It's her first glimpse of the old bluesman. She instinctively recoils at what she sees. If deprivation possessed a countenance, this would be its appearance. Age lines cut across his face, like cracks in the soil of a dry creek bed. His skin is ashen, gray, as are his scruffy, unkempt hair and scraggly beard. He has a terrible under-bite, a big nose, and loose jowls that sag like the water bags that hang (almost all of them empty) throughout the camp. His Adam's apple sticks out from his neck like a gigantic walnut.
"Are you all right?" she asks, wondering if anyone who looks so ancient, so used up, could ever be all right.
He nods and tries to smile. "My -- my --" he wheezes, "my own fault."
"No," says Hana. "It's Ansel's fault."
Ansel says, "Look, it's no big deal. I'll take him to Medical. He'll be fine. He's just winded."
"No!" Hana says, startling herself with her assertiveness as much as it surprises Ansel. "You're supposed to be on guard duty. I'll take him to Medical."
Ansel sounds angrier than she's ever heard him: "What was he doing out here anyway? It's the middle of the night and he's wandering around in the dark. I don't like it." To the old man: "I'm going to have to report this to McHaney, you know." Then to Hana: "We might have to watch him more closely from now on."
Old Robert says nothing in response.
"Fine," Hana mutters. "Just help me get him to his feet."
Ansel pulls him up none too gently. Hana wraps her arm around the old man's waist. He's light as a feather. She barely feels him leaning into her. She does notice that he doesn't smell. Not much, at least -- not half as repugnant as Ansel, and nowhere near as old as Poppa.
"Go on," she says to Ansel, shooing him away. "You're on duty." To her surprise, Ansel obeys her without a word. Hana notices the old man's guitar lying on the ground. She leans over, picks it up, hands it to him. What is she thinking? Why is she helping this fool?
He tucks the guitar under his arm, and places a warm hand on her shoulder. "Thank you," he says -- either for the guitar or for her support, Hana isn't sure which. He seems to be breathing more easily now.
"Don't bother thanking me. I'm taking you to Medical because you're hurt. I'd do the same for anybody."
"But you're doing it for me."
"Not really," responds Hana. "I'm doing it for me." It feels good, putting the old man in his place. "It must be difficult for you," she continues, encouraged by her own impudence, "always having to depend on the charity of other people. It's hard to believe a beggar could survive these days, out in the wild, on his own."
"It's my profession keeps me alive, lil' honey."
"Little honey?" Hana laughs. "You're as crazy as they come. I can't believe the council let you in. You're not worth your weight in water."
"Ouch, woman, where does all that nasty come from?"
"Just shut up. It's not much farther to Medical." They continue walking. Hana can navigate the entire compound blindfolded if she has to. All the guards can. It is a requirement of anyone who pulls night duty, as Hana does from time to time.
"How 'bout I play you a song?" Old Robert asks, suddenly. Hana tries to ignore him. "Somethin' low and slow, for the night, somethin' baby-blue to make you coo --"
"Christ, shut up!" In front of them looms the medical building. It's the same as every other shack, except a little larger. "We're here." Hana pulls Old Robert behind her through the front door. "I've brought in a senility case!" she shouts into the building, then turns around, strides outside, and slams the door shut.
"Little honey," she snarls. If she could spare the saliva, she'd spit.
Hana sits alone on the hillside. The air is warm. The night, dark. It is November, the week of the New Moon. She no longer counts the days she's had to avoid listening to Old Robert's music. Lately, it's all anybody talks about: "Did you hear him play for the children at the school house?"; "Did you hear him play after council session Tuesday night?"; "Did you hear him play as they handed out the water rations?"; "Isn't he wonderful?" Even Poppa, coming home all smiling and happy yesterday: "Hana, did you hear Old Robert play at the village square, under the poplar tree?" The poplar is the only healthy tree in their central compound, and not even Hana begrudges the drops of water it drinks each week. The tree stands for hope. It is their community treasure. Hana is angry enough at the council for allowing Robert to play at all, let alone under the poplar. It isn't right. None of it is right. The old fool is one more mouth to feed, less water for everyone else, and offers them nothing of value, nothing they need except -- how did Ansel put it? -- distraction.
She blinks away these thoughts and stares into the darkness. Hana cannot afford distraction. She's been asked to pull a second guard duty because of the increase in nighttime skirmishes. She is tired, thirsty, hungry, and as much as she hates to admit it, a little afraid. And there is Ansel to worry about. Because of the extra shifts she hasn't seen much of him, but soon he will come for her, expecting...something she cannot give. She will have to tell him so. It's only fair to cut him loose now, while he still stands a chance to find someone else, someone who will be happy with him. She won't be making any friends in the community with this decision, but she doesn't care.
She leans her carbine against a rock and sips water from her canteen. One good thing about pulling an extra shift is that she gets extra water. It's a breezeless night, quiet, so when she hears footsteps approaching she has plenty of time to raise her rifle. She clicks on her scope light.
"Don't shoot." Old Robert steps into view, wearing a careless smile, dragging his guitar alongside him. His shirt and pants are filthy, but his shoes, the shoes McHaney questioned him about for many hours, are shiny and clean, maroon-colored leather. Hana almost laughs at the thought of McHaney interrogating such a silly-looking bum about his new shoes. She clicks off the scope light and lowers her rifle. "What the hell do you want? There's a curfew, haven't you heard? Nobody should be out at night with so much shooting going on."
"I like to walk at night. The night is a bluesman's friend, girl. Don't you know that? Helps him think, makes him wonder."
"Well, you can walk and think and wonder right back to your hold. You're a guest here. You can be turned out at any time, especially if you don't follow the rules."
"There's an old saying goes, 'rules are made to be broken'."
"So are old men," Hana replies.
"So are young girls," laughs Old Robert.
Hana sighs. The poor fellow really is senile. "Look, I'm going to be straight with you. I'm on watch. I have responsibilities to this community, something I'm sure you wouldn't understand. It's dangerous for you to be out here. So get back to your hold and don't give me a hard time about it."
"Well, now, that's a little better. You've finally spoken to me as if I'm a real, living, breathing, human being."
"If you want to remain a real, living, breathing, human being, you'll move along." She does not look at him when she speaks. Instead, her eyes scan the dark horizon. She doesn't mind the night. It's black and motionless. It's easier on the eyes than the dusty, dull-brown days.
"Your poppa showed me his book today, The Music of Algorithms."
"What? Poppa showed you the book? Why?"
Robert smiles. "Because he's proud of it."
"Poppa doesn't show our book to anyone." Hana grips her rifle tightly. "I want you to leave my father alone. Things are difficult enough for him. He doesn't need you intruding upon what little privacy he gets here."
"Things are pretty difficult for you, too. Your father loves you very much, you know, but he's worried about you. You have no mother, no other kin, no friends. And you're such an angry child, your poppa says, just like a clenched fist." Robert raises his withered hand and makes a fist, an awkward fist, as if the very thought of it confounds him.
"Poppa had no right to say any of that to you," says Hana.
"Your father meant you no harm or disrespect. He's a great man, very smart, very giving. I can tell just by spending a few minutes in his company that he's filled with love."
"That's right," says Hana, softer, in spite of her anger. Not everyone in the community would say that about Poppa, or see it for that matter. "Why did you come here?"
"To walk, to talk..."
Strange how his voice seems melodic. No one else Hana knows talks like that. "I don't mean tonight. I mean, why are you here, in this community? You don't belong, you know."
"You seem to be the only one who feels that way." It's a statement of fact, not an accusation. "Even your boyfriend, Ansel, accepts me now, ain't mad at me no more
for -- "
"He's not my boyfriend!"
"He believes otherwise."
"I can't help what Ansel --" Hana clips off her own words. Of course she can help what Ansel believes, she just hasn't done it yet. "This is none of your business."
"True." Old Robert steps closer and sits on the rock beside her. He takes a deep breath and looks up at the stars, although there are not many stars to see tonight.
"You offer us nothing," Hana says. "Nothing except those stupid songs you sing. You won't even defend our resources, which we've been kind enough to share with you." Ansel told her that Old Robert won't handle a gun. Hands that caress a guitar, he told the council, will never carry a weapon. "If anyone else did this, that person would be banished, left to fend for himself. But not you. Everyone accepts you just the way you are."
"And for you this creates a problem."
Hana says nothing. Silent consent.
"I suppose I understand why," Old Robert continues.
"I doubt that," Hana mumbles, still trying to concentrate on her assigned surveillance area.
"You doubt many things. Your emotions, your strength, your wisdom...yourself." Hana turns toward him, opening her mouth to argue, but Old Robert raises his hand. "I know," he says. "Shut up, Old Robert, you talk too much!"
Hana shakes her head and suppresses a smile. She can't deny the man has a certain charm, a certain easiness she's never seen in anyone before, not even Poppa.
"The doubts aren't your fault. They're a function of age -- your age, this insane age in which we live, a collision of two opposing worlds."
"That sounds like something Poppa would say," Hana remarks without really thinking about it. Words Poppa would have said in an earlier time, she thinks, a time when his little darling and his sweet, sweet angel lived in a big house, and people respected them. She slams the door on these pleasant memories. "I'm sixteen years old," she says to Old Robert. "I'm not some foolish little girl, you know. I don't need a lecture about the cruelties of life."
"No, I'm sure you don't. This world never allowed you to be a foolish little girl. What a shame."
Something about this conversation troubles Hana, something beyond the fact that it's taking place here, now, with this man who, for reasons she cannot explain -- not even to herself -- she is trying her best to scorn. It's too comfortable, and at the same time comfortless. After a moment, Hana says, "You sound different when you talk. I mean, your voice. It's -- I don't know --"
"It sings," says Robert, holding the last word in his throat, almost humming it.
Whatever it's doing, Hana doesn't like it. She suspects it's intentional, meant to sway her in some subtle way. "It's all an act, isn't it? A performance. Every word that comes out of your mouth. You're just an old beggar, a pitiful old white-trash beggar who happens to play a guitar. What do you know about the blues? You're not even black." Hana doesn't know much about music; she barely had a chance to listen to it before father lost his job and suddenly there was no money and then the Water Wars broke out, the first of the Water Wars, the bad ones that split states and cities and towns and families; when she was a child, there was never much time or reason to listen to music; but she knows enough to be sure a bluesman ought to be black.
Old Robert smirks. "You haven't listened to my music, have you? Times change. The blues aren't about black or white anymore. The blues are about pain, about soul. Maybe they always were."
Hana shakes her head. "Why should I care about your pain? I've got enough of my own."
"Now you're getting it. The blues share the pain, yours and mine, share everybody's hurt, trades it off, swaps it. The blues are a way to let go of all that nasty, Hana. You've got to feel all the rage, all the sorrow buried deep inside you, let it come and let it go, just like the blues comes and goes and leaves you feeling whole again."
Is that a sound Hana hears out in front of her post? Or the wind? She peers into the darkness, but there is nothing there to see. "Look, you've over-stayed your welcome. You better leave now."
Old Robert props his guitar up on his knee. "I want you to listen to something first."
Before Hana can stop him, he strums his guitar.
"Listen real good now," he whispers, he sings, "listen to the C chord, sailing, drifting, oh yes...let my pretty lil' E7 talk to your heart and soul...nice, nice...feel the movement of my Am, mmm, hmmm, deep, deep down, all the way to your toes...listen...the tones, the timbres, a language more ancient than words bending around your bones...now what about that, Hana?...that's my baby-blues...ain't my baby nice?...
And it is nice, thinks Hana. Damn him, damn him it's nice; it's everything she was afraid it would be; it's warm instead of hot; it tingles the spine instead of raising it; it soothes her temper like a cool summer rain...
"Do you know the history of the blues?" he asks, he sings in his melodic voice, playing his guitar slowly, playing more, it seems to Hana, with the movement of the night, and the feel of hot, dry air on her skin.
"A little." She doesn't admit how little.
"It comes from Louisiana and Arkansas and Missouri and Tennessee, all up and down the Mississippi River, places named New Orleans and Little Rock and Tupelo and Memphis, where sharecroppers used to sing the stories of their lives, and barrelhouse piano players wept over their keys. It comes from a burning hot August night in Shreveport, in an all- Negro barber shop in the early 1900s, where the men played guitar and tapped their toes to the music and sang gentle, rocking songs of poverty and starvation and hopelessness. It comes from Chicago, years later, where the pastoral sounds of rural blues took on a sharper edge, the electric sound of the big city. It comes from a time when your ancestors, Hana, your people, suffered even greater hardships than you're suffering now."
Hana thinks about the perpetual heat, her never-ending thirst, the constant threat of attacks upon the community, and wonders how this could be possible.
"But now, child, it's our music, all of us. My music. Yours, too. Your hurt, your pain, your life. The blues belong to you now, Hana. Can you feel them singing inside you? Can you open your heart to them? Because if you can, lil' honey, you're free, free, free --"
-- The blast of an automatic rifle rips through the night. Hana shrieks. She grabs her carbine and dives for cover. Bullets scream past her, pinging off the rocks. Close! Damn close! She hears voices, the angry voices of men. Footsteps. They run past her, the angry men, their scope lights fanning the terrain. Ten, twelve, twenty of them or more. They keep coming, blasting their way in, automatic rifles swallowing, vomiting spent cartridges.
Hana can't believe what's happening. She can't move. If they spot her she's dead. There's nothing she can do but let them pass. She hears Old Robert breathing heavily beside her.
"Lord have mercy," he whispers, the music gone from his voice. "Lord have mercy."
An explosion rocks the earth. Hana can smell gasoline. "Shit," she says. "They've got goddamned gasoline bombs." Orange flames and smoke blacker than the night billow into the sky, near the center of their compound. They've penetrated all the way in! "Stay here, old man!" Hana grips her carbine and stands.
"Wait, girl! What are you doing? You can't go in there!" Old Robert reaches for her.
"Shut up! I'm going in. Poppa --"
She leaps forward, crouches down, making sure her scope light is off so she won't become an easy target. She can walk the entire compound blindfolded, and right now Hana is grateful she and the others have trained for this kind of an assault. She closes in. They are not a walled and barricaded community. They have some fences, some wire around their perimeter, some rocky outposts, but nothing built to withstand a full attack against automatic weapons and gasoline bombs. They didn't want it that way, didn't want their homes turned into prisons. If there is a rush, the outpost guards are to relent, flank, and then collapse on the center and encircle their attackers. Those in the compound will barricade themselves inside their shacks and shoot outward, drawing gunfire, bearing the brunt of the raid. This is their survival plan. Some will die, of course. Against heavy fire power some of their own are bound to die. But in the end they will kill more. This is their theory of survival.
Hana's heart pounds in her chest. Her arms and legs are wrought with tension. She grits her teeth against anger and fear, and moves swiftly, silently forward.
Another explosion throws a fiery illumination over the village square. The poplar tree bursts into flames. Hana sees their own guards closing in around their enemies -- one of those guards is Ansel, although she cannot tell which one -- but the attackers she sees clearly, exposed in the heart of the compound, firing at the island of weak structures where Hana and her people live. Poppa, she thinks. Stay inside. Stay down. Please be smart, Poppa, be safe...
Taking advantage of the light from the burning tree, Hana raises her gun, aims at a man, picking out one enemy, just like McHaney trained her to do. She squeezes the trigger. The gun barks in her ear, kicks into her shoulder, but she is prepared for it. Hana has learned how to shoot a gun, knows how it stings, how it smells faintly of sulfur. She doesn't know if she has hit her target, doesn't stop to think about it. She takes aim again. This time, Hana and the other guards seem to shoot all at once. A long row of attackers falls in a clean line, an almost impossible ballet of death. Another bomb explodes. Hana's people keep firing into the core of the attack. More of their assailants drop. The survivors try to shoot back, but they fire blindly, into the darkness. Finding themselves trapped, their resolve crumbles, and they break, all of them at once, running in different directions for the perimeter.
This is how McHaney always said it would be. Fast and brutal. Gunfire, bombs, death, burning buildings, all within a few horrible moments.
And then recovery, McHaney's recovery plan. Hana is trained so well she does not have to think. She is to go to the sandbags; she is to help put out the fires; others will assist the medical teams and the rescue squads, but Hana will help with the fires. But first she must make sure Poppa is safe. She runs for their shack --
And then, even from far away, she sees their shack all aflame, smoke curling up around its fragile walls. "Poppa!" She screams, running, running --
There! She sees him! Poppa! Crawling out of the shack. He collapses halfway past the burning threshold.
She sprints forward, gasping for breath, terrified by the sight of her father struggling, fighting for his life. "Poppa, please..." There is no getting near the shack -- no -- too much fire -- smoke -- heat -- yet Hana forces herself onward, choking, coughing. Her face feels on fire. She grabs hold of Poppa's arms and drags him out, drags him to safety just as their shack succumbs to gas and fire, collapses into a melting pot of sparks and ashes and bitter memories.
"Poppa!" She leans over him and hugs him to her chest. "You're going to be all right. I promise, I promise." And when Hana separates herself from him, her tattered shirt is smeared with blood. Poppa's blood.
"Hana?" says Poppa. "I think I've been shot." There is no pain in his voice, no sadness, no grief, no anger. It's just Poppa, kind and trusting and loving.
"No," says Hana, putting her hand over the wound at her father's belly.
"I was trying to shoot the gun, the way McHaney trained us, and I forgot there were no bullets in it, and I was thinking what a silly old fool I am. I was laughing." He coughs. It is a wet cough. Blood in his lungs? No, it can't be. Hana refuses to believe it. "And then all of a sudden I was bleeding. Isn't that something? It hurt. And then our home was on fire, Hana. Isn't that a terrible thing? Our home was on fire."
"It's just a shack," says Hana, suddenly thinking how stupid she has been for ceaselessly correcting him. It's a shack, Poppa! she would snap at him whenever he called it a "home," as he always did. Poppa would look sad for a few moments, but not for long, just long enough, it seemed to Hana, for him to start thinking about something else. "Shhh, Poppa, don't talk. I'm going to run and get help. You're going to be fine." But Hana, in the dim light of the snapping fire, can now see the blood leaking from Poppa's lips, and she knows, damn it all to hell, she knows there is no running from this.
He closes his hand around her forearm. His touch is cold. Hana can't remember anything cold ever touching her skin. Poppa's eyes have a horrible, slick, glaze to them. He peers at her. "I was whittling another angel," he says.
"An angel? What are you talking about, Poppa?"
"All my angels are burning," he whispers. "All my sweet, sweet angels."
Of course, thinks Hana. She never saw the angels in his woodwork. She never looked for them. "Don't worry, Poppa. We'll make more of them. Together. I'll help you. I promise. Do you hear me? We'll make more. Just the two of us."
But her father does not answer.
Hana reaches up with trembling fingers and closes Poppa's eyes.
Once again, Hana is alone. More alone than ever before in her life.
She felt this same terrible solitude, an almost palpable sense of isolation, the day her mother died. In the wake of that earlier tragedy, Poppa was there to ease her pain, to assuage her sorrow. Today, with Poppa gone, she has no one.
In his own oafish way, Ansel offered her solace last night. He wanted to comfort her with kisses and a warm caresses -- not payment due for the precious water he'd shared with her, as Hana feared would be the case, but a genuine attempt at consolation. Still, she rejected him. Gently, but she rejected him nevertheless. It was time, she knew, to make Ansel understand.
It's not Ansel's fault, Hana realizes as she sits alone on the hillside, looking down at what, until a few short hours ago, was her home. The charred husk of the poplar tree glows in the dusk, the dull orange glow of dying heat, fading hope. The still smoldering remains similarly strive to impede the inescapable obscurity of the coming night. It is a futile effort; the darkness will prevail. It always does, thinks Hana. She can't help wondering whether, this time, the light shall ever return.
Hana senses the old man's approach before she detects any tangible evidence of his presence. "Go away." She does not look up, but speaks only to the deepening shadows. There is no acrimony in her voice. No animosity. No emotion at all. Merely resignation.
"I'm going," comes the reply, equally indifferent. Old Robert emerges from the sparse brush. He's carrying his guitar and a cloth sack, a pauper's suitcase. He steps up next to her, but does not sit down. "I'm leaving your community. Soon. Perhaps tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning. I like it here, but I think it's best to move on."
"Good." She still doesn't look at him. She can't.
Somewhere down below them, within the decimated compound, tiny pockets of air trapped within still-warm embers rupture and pop, seeking release in a shower of sparks, a cruel mockery of nature's frugality. A woman sobs. A child weeps. A grown man cries. So many died in last night's raid. So much was lost.
"You're leaving, too, aren't you?" he says, finally.
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
"You're right. I do. There's nothing for me here..." Her throat goes dry. It is more than the perpetual thirst associated with living in this place, at this time. "Not anymore. Like you said, it's best to move on."
Old Robert touches her shoulder with a withered hand. She flinches, but does not pull away. "About last night...your father...I'm sorry he --"
"Don't say it. It's only half true. It's only Poppa's body I'll be burying here, alongside the others who were killed in the raid. His spirit died a long time ago."
"No, it's his spirit that lives, child. Maybe it's your spirit that died. Have the blues, so recently discovered, gone silent in your soul? Is the nasty all you have left? All you'll ever have?"
Her breath catches, not quite a sob. "Yes...No...I don't know." She says nothing more.
He places two calloused fingers under her chin and gently raises her face until their eyes meet. He studies her expression, stares into her soul. "You haven't even cried for your daddy, have you child?"
She hasn't. She's tried, but the tears won't come. It's as if this cruel, barren, burning world has cauterized her -- ripped away everything she's ever possessed and, in the process, seared her to the very core of her being, leaving behind no open wound to indicate the depth of her loss.
"I've got no tears left, old man. They're all gone. Everything's gone. Momma. Poppa. Poppa's book. The angels I didn't even recognize. Everything."
"Oh, Hana. My poor, poor Hana." Laying down his guitar and the cloth sack, Old Robert sits next to her, pulls her close. "Remember what I told you, child." He cradles her head to his chest, strokes her hair. His voice changes, sings, just like it did the previous night. "You got to share the pain, let it come, then let it go, just like that sharecropper in Arkansas, the slave in Louisiana, a midwife in Tennessee. You can't hold the hurt inside, no more than they could. You do, and it'll blind you with anger and hate, never let you see the beauty the world -- even this insane world -- possesses."
Gently, he releases her. Hana assumes -- a part of her even hopes -- that he's leaving. She closes her eyes. Let him go, she thinks. Who needs him? He's just a foolish old man, just like Poppa.
Then she hears it, the true sound of the blues: a bent but not broken spirit sailing the night, set adrift atop Robert's familiar C chord, followed by an E7, then an Am, drifting up and down the scale, riding the worn frets of a battered guitar. And, once again, she hears Old Robert's voice: still singing, but not just words, not this time. This time, he merges the words with a melody, fuses them together, creating a whole that -- somehow, in some inexplicable way -- becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
"Nobody loves you, when you're down and out.
In your pocket, not one penny.
And as for friends, you ain't got any..."
Hana feels the hurt, the pain, welling up inside her. She feels something else, as well. Tears. They come slowly at first, but they do come. And once they start, they flow freely, just like the words and melody of the old man's song.
"You think you have nothing," Old Robert says, "but it ain't true. You always got something." Calloused fingers continue to play. They caress the nylon strings of his guitar, coax them to continue singing, as he speaks. "That's what the blues is all about. The world may take away everything else -- friends, family, your home, a lover -- even love that don't get no chance to grow -- but it can never steal your soul. So long as you hold onto that, the blues tell us, you got wealth beyond measure."
Hana looks up at him. The tears, precious water, blur her vision, but she sees the old man more clearly than she ever did before. She says nothing. She doesn't have to.
"Yep," Old Robert continues, studying the look in her eyes, "wealth beyond measure. You got somethin' more than that, too, Hana, something you probably thought was gone forever. Look in my bag, lil' honey."
She doesn't understand, but does as he asks. Oh, my God, she thinks, Can it be?
Hana withdraws the book from Old Robert's bag. The embossed letters are blistered, their color burned away by the fire, but she can still make out the words, vaguely, that once graced its cover. The Music of Algorithms, by Ronald Charles Carver.
Poppa!
"I found it this afternoon, while pokin' around the rubble. It was tucked away under a tin bowl. Your Poppa, he must've stuck it in there when the fire started. Smart man. It's a little burned, and smells a bit like piss --" the old man chuckles when he says this -- "but I figured you'd want it."
Hana clutches the scorched book to her chest. She can't stop crying. Nor does she try. Her tears are sad, but her heart is filled with hope...
...and the sound of the blues echoes through the arid night.
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