The City of Mirrors

They had passed through the last of the outer townships when the radio crackled: “Pull over, everyone. Looks like we’ve lost one.”

Caleb brought the bus to a halt and stepped down as his father, Chase, and Amy emerged from the lead Humvee. One of the buses, the fourth in line, was parked with its hood open. Steam and liquid were pouring from its radiator.

Hollis was standing on the bumper, slapping at the engine with a rag. “I think it’s the water pump.”

“Can you do anything about it?” Caleb’s father said. “It’d have to be fast.”

Hollis jumped down. “No chance. These old things aren’t built for this. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for one to conk out.”

“As long as we’re stopped,” Sara suggested, “probably the children need to go.”

“Go where?”

“To the bathroom, Peter.”

Caleb’s father sighed impatiently. Any minute of delay was a minute they’d be driving in darkness at the other end. “Just watch for snakes. That’s all we need right now.”

The children filed off and were led into the weeds, girls on one side of the buses, boys on the other. By the time the convoy was ready to move again, they had been stopped for twenty minutes. A hot Texas wind was blowing. It was 0130 hours, the sun poised above them like the head of a hammer in the sky.

—

The patch was complete, the dock ready to fill. Michael, Lore, and Rand, in one of six pump houses along the weir, were preparing to open the vents to the sea. Greer was gone, headed with Patch to Rosenberg in the last tanker truck.

“Shouldn’t we say something?” Lore asked Michael.

“How about ‘Please open, you bastard’?”

The wheel had not been turned in seventeen years.

“That’ll have to do,” said Lore.

Michael wedged a pry bar between the spokes; Lore was holding a mallet. Michael and Rand gripped the bar and leaned in.

“Hit it now.”

Lore, positioned to the side, swung the mallet. It glanced off the top of the rim.

“For God’s sake.” Michael’s jaws were clenched, his face reddened with effort. “Hit the bastard.”

Blow after blow: still the wheel refused to turn.

“This isn’t great,” Rand said.

“Let me try,” said Lore.

“How’s that going to help?” Then, when Lore just stared at him, he stepped aside. “Suit yourself.”

Lore left the pry bar where it was, gripping the wheel instead.

“You’ve got no leverage,” Rand said. “That’ll never work.”

Lore ignored him. She planted her feet wide. The muscles in her arms tightened, thick ropes stretched over bone.

“This is pointless,” Michael said. “We have to think of something else.”

Then, miraculously, the wheel began to turn. An inch, then two. They all heard it: water had begun to move. A fine spray shot through the vent on the floor of the dock. With a jolt, the wheel released. Below them, the seas began to pour in. Lore backed away, flexing her fingers.

“We must have loosened it,” Rand said lamely.

She gave them a droll smile.

—

The time was fast approaching.

His army was gone. Carter had felt the dopeys leaving him: a scream of terror, and a blast of pain, and then the letting go. Their souls had passed through him like wind, a whorl of memories, waning, then gone.

He did the last of his chores for the day with a solemn feeling. A deck of low clouds moved over the sky as he rolled his mower to the shed, padlocked the door, and turned to face the yard so that he might survey his handiwork. The crisp lawn, every blade just so. The tailored edges along the walkways with their bit of monkey grass to mark them. The trees all limbed up and the flowers, banks of them, like a carpet of color beneath the hedges. That morning, a dwarf Japanese cut-leaf maple had appeared by the gate. Mrs. Wood had always wanted one. Carter had rolled it in its plastic pot to the corner of the yard and set it in the ground. Cut-leafs had an elegant feel to them, like the hands of a beautiful woman. It felt like an act of completion to plant it there, a final gift to the yard he’d tended for so long.

He wiped his brow. The sprinklers came on, scattering a fine mist over the lawn. Inside the house, the little girls were laughing. Carter wished he could see them, talk to them. He imagined himself sitting on the patio while watching them play in the yard, tossing a ball or chasing each other. Little girls needed time in the sunshine.

He hoped he didn’t stink too bad. He sniffed his armpits and supposed he’d pass all right. At the kitchen window, he inspected his reflection. It was a long time since he’d bothered to do that. He supposed he looked like he always had, which wasn’t really one thing or the other, just a face like most people’s.