Haven's Past
A Trauma Tale.
So the Trauma story has a life of its own now. I am going to follow this as far as I can as I also want to know the history of the Bright and the Oli and just what happened to the Civilised Once.
Coot Demure is part Creole, part Cherokee and part witchdoctor according to the more Puritan members of the Haven cooperative. Coot’s family had drifted west and north for a generation or two but it was only because her grandfather ran out of gas just outside Haven escaping the Trauma that the Demure family ended up a fixture in the cooperative.
Coot’s father Danuwoa Demure was a hard-working hard-fighting man who won respect for the family by being the first to lead any defence of the town against any random Traumed who wandered too close to Haven. But it’s Coot Demure that the people of Haven think of when they think about the Demure tribe.
Coot has presence, a witchy aura part because of her eccentric dress code and part because of her scary amounts of almost Bright smarts. Coot has reinvented medicine from scratch, so the doctor part of the witch is authentic as anything gets these days, but the witch part means people still think twice about knocking on Coot’s door but are usually grateful that they had. Coot is also the bossiest woman in the cooperative and that judgement includes the vinegar-quenched steel deployed by Sue-Anne of the Lazy Rustler, which was where Coot Demure is headed this morning.
“It’s a waste of her time and our future, Sue-Anne.” Coot Demure has her hands on her hips, her legs set wide and determined. Coot would pass for beautiful once but a frown had settled on her face at around the age of thirteen and never left. That frown left lines that had deepened as she aged. Sue-Anne matches Coot’s ‘this is business’ stance with elbows on the bar and a twist to her lips.
‘Don’t go railing at me, Coot. Sheriff Tom ordered her to work in the Lazy to earn her Qota. I don’t want the uppity little bitch, so you are welcome any time Tom says she is free.’
The subject of the exchange is the small red-haired woman leaning on her broom by the kitchen door watching the display of force.
‘I can think of better ways to get her to earn her Qota than sweeping up after a bunch of drunks. She’s a goldmine of information that you are wasting, a goldmine I tell you.’
‘Tell the Sheriff not me, Coot. He’s out at his barn mechaniking mind, so you are going to waste a couple of hours walking out and back.’
‘You tell him! Girl, you are coming with me. Now!’
The red-haired girl drops her broom handle to the floor and marches towards the main door to the Lazy through which Coot Demure is already leaving.
‘Dammit, girl, you just pick up that… oh hell what’s it matter, at least she’s gone.’
A minute or two later Sue-Anne is smiling and pouring herself a glass of Haven’s finest grain whisky, distilled on site and matured for a couple of weeks in the old molasses barrels that have sat out back since Sue-Anne was court-able. The Princess is gone. No more hours of chivvying the lazy bitch to do some work. No more clearing up after her mess. No more interminable diatribes on ‘the imminent collapse of proto-Soviet societies’ or ‘the slavery of the communist fantasy’.
Sue-Anne takes a sip.
The whisky is something you have to get accustomed to, but it still eases out the wrinkles.
‘Here’s to you, Coot.’
Coot Demure leads the girl down Main to the edge of the town where the school, a once pristine twentieth-century building now much patched, stood in its own grounds set back from Main. Coot leads the girl past a homemade Emergency sign set up on the entrance and into the cool wide corridor that runs the length of the building.
The corridor floor is worn but waxed and polished. The corridor walls are white and clean. There is the smell of some alcohol-based disinfectant. The girl looks to the right and left as she follows Coot to the far end of the corridor. Two of the classrooms have been converted, one as a trauma centre and one as a ward for recovery. There are some beds in the ward and one is occupied by a frail old man with white hair and deep-sunk vacant eyes. The girl passes a second improvised ward glimpsed through the gap in the blinds that have been pulled down over the corridor windows.
‘It’s a hospital. I am not a nurse.’
‘It’s still a school, but there are far more sick people than children. That’s just a fact after the Trauma.’
Coot Demure stops at the door to a classroom.
‘This is the entire school now.’
There is a long wall of books Coot has added to over time, books from the Civilised Once, Books from before the Trauma. Coot doesn’t hold with words you can’t feel with your fingertips so the books are hard used and frankly some of them are a bit scrappy.
Tables and chairs are arranged in islands rather than rows and on the other long wall the kids’ work is up on display, changing every day as the work is done, each small scrap of paper used both sides. One day, when there is enough paper again, Coot hopes to present each child with their own book of their work at the end of every year. That day is a long way off.
On the short wall opposite the hallway there is one large map full of history and pain hanging above the teacher’s desk. The map is pasted over an older map. The print on the earlier map which is visible at the bottom of the newer one is finer, the colours yellowed but far more subtle.
Coot points at the big crude map.
‘You remember the world before this?’
‘I was young, but yes. America used to be much smaller. It had to be made great.’
‘Because of the climate because of the minerals.’
The girl laughed.
‘Because of size! America used to look small on the world map, not representative of its true power. Once the 51st and 52nd states were added America became the biggest country in the world. Our leader’s genius was in recognising that power must be expressed.’
‘Your family were Oli back then?’
‘Why am I here?’
Coot notes the diversion but decides not to push it yet.
‘You are going to tell me everything you know.’
‘Why should I help a communist?’
‘We aren’t communists, Haven is a cooperative.’
The ancient teenager laughs at Coot. ‘You are so small.’
‘You want to go back to sweeping Sue-Ann’s floor?’
‘So that is my choice, be a broom or an open book?’
‘At least you have a choice.’
‘I have a better idea. This is a cooperative, yes? So we will cooperate. I tell you what I know about back then, you tell me about Haven. Deal?’
And there it is, thinks Coot Demure. The first flicker of the Oli inside the girl. Coot suppresses the chill of fear that the girl just caused.
It’s later, the shadows on Main long and lazy. The air cooling while the sky glowed orange in the west. Normally the quiet time of the day sliding to night. Dino’s Diner was filling up, and the street food vans are doing steady business. It is a time for people to meet up, share their views on the day. Peaceful. Except for the conversation taking place in the bar of the Lazy Rustler.
‘Well listen to you Mr High and Mighty Sheriff! If I see a wrong I don’t sit on my arse waiting for anyone’s permission to put it right, I act.’
Tom Ridley is a straight man, even a good man. But he lacks perspective. Coot explains this to herself but Tom isn’t having it.
‘You think you are above the law, Coot, always have. No doubt you always will but that just pisses people off and people includes me!’
Tom is keeping his voice low but there is plenty of bite in it. If Coot had been looking at Tom instead of trying to outstare her own anger in the bar mirror she would have backed off, but Coot being Coot she has to press it.
‘What law, Tom? What law do we have out here?’
‘You got me, Coot, because I am the damn fool the cooperative voted for.’
‘Kinda confirms the average IQ of our happy post-Civ commune don’t you think?’
Tom lets out his frustration in an explosive sigh and rubs at the chords of tension that are stretching the back of his neck. The Lazy is busy for midweek and Tom knows exactly what Coot is trying to do. The Demure family always had a tangential contact with the law. Famous for it.
‘We can go round this merry-go-round all night long if you want, Coot. What I want to know is what are you trying to find out from the girl.’
Coot sniffs and empties her glass. Waves at the barkeep, Sue-Anne not trusting herself to serve Coot in a civil manner.
‘Finally, a smart question from the law. Why do you think that capsule came down here, Tom?’
‘You could have asked me that, Coot. The Bright suit told me this was the best place to witness the break-up of Ilium.’
‘And being Tom Ridley you took that at face value.’
‘And being Coot Demure I suppose you know better.’
‘Tom when something that size, must have been millions of tonnes of infrastructure, when that mass enters that atmosphere the breakup lasts for orbits. The burn phase can be seen clear across the country. So what did she or it put down here? The Sheriff’s paying. Take it from his Qota.’
This last comment was to the barkeep who looks to Tom for agreement. Tom surrenders and nods his head. Coot picks up her fresh glass and glanced at Tom, who was staring right back at her but not at all annoyed anymore. Not even about freeloading the drink. He was frowning for all the right reasons.
‘You mean there is another reason the suit chose here?’
‘See how effective the law is when it thinks, Tom? You only have the Bright suit’s word it was in control of the operation, Tom.’
‘You have a reason to doubt the suit?’
‘Doubt every damn thing every damn day. That’s my motto. Especially when something weird is going down. Hell, Tom, it was a Bright! Or part of a Bright if the story about it being held captive by the Oli is true, and that kind of makes sense. Why else would the Bright leave Ilium alone? They lasered every other Oli stronghold. They wouldn’t kill their own kind, a machine with an infinite future.’
‘But why here? Haven’s nothing.’ Which Tom hated acknowledging but a small town and a few farms hooked together on chain was not anything to shout about. So small a concern that the Trauma had largely passed them by. Coot took another sip of Haven Gold, some joker’s name for the spirit Sue-Anne cooked up to pickle herself from the inside out.
‘You know the town used to be called Greenfield don’t you, Tom?’
Tom’s new frown told Coot this was news. If it wasn’t so damn painful she could have enjoyed teasing Tom more. He pulled such goddamn funny expressions on his big broad face when confounded. But she knew the punchline, or suspected she did. But then I do suspect everything and everyone, Coot agreed with her inner critic, even myself.
‘Haven’s been Haven since before I was born.’
‘Came across some old papers when I was going through the library for the kids. I was looking for some maps to cover that damn abomination that sponsored old whore who called herself a teacher stuck over the state map in the classroom. Tried peeling it off but they had damn good glues back then. So I went hustling. Found a really old town map when Main was the bar, some frame-fronted tent stores and a hitch for horses. Eighteen something. Town was called Greenfield back then.’
‘So why the change?’
‘Makes you think, doesn’t it.’
So that was all a week ago and I kept worrying at it until I made my mind to do something about it when I woke up this morning.
Coot had shown me the old map by the light of a candle and the next day we had gone back to the old courthouse which is now the town grain store. There is an office space at the back used to reconcile the Qota every delivery and in that office is a stack of old court records that no one was sure about repurposing because they covered farm deeds and contracts and you never knew when ownership might be contested. And there it was in the oldest records. Greenfield, in the county of Wilton. Nineteen hundred and fifty-one it was still Greenfield and then a big jump to two ought twenty and nothing in between.
‘Told yah, Tom. Doubt every damn thing every damn day.’
The witchdoctor was right.
‘Sammy!’ I yell at my apprentice.
‘Boss?’
‘You got the shop all day.’
‘Oh, Ok Boss. Only, what do I tell folk, Boss?’
‘Tell them the Sheriff is out chasing a crime.
Speaking of crime, as you may have noticed this chapter has strayed into contemporary politics which I am always happy to do if it fits into the story, but some people may feel unhappy to read. Sorry about that, but literature is always going to upset some people.
There are a lot of technical reasons why ‘inviting’ Canada and Greenland into the union makes perfect sense from a geopolitical futures perspective, but I can’t help imagining one morning early in the new administration in the Oval Office where a Thiel programmed drone with a sharpie and a globe is saying ‘See Mr President … greater!’
He’d go for to wouldn’t he.
Hell yes he would.
Loving this Steve !
He totally would. You stray to your heart's content, Steve, I'm loving it!