"Alec in Wartime"
a Short Story
by
Mark Winburn

The cleanest spot in the Zone was the street in front of the Brandenbergs' house. Originally the building stood four storeys tall but the top was now a shambles. In the first days of the bombings one of them plummeted through the skylight in their bathroom, left open in haste, and stuck in the toilet. The sound of shattering ceramic echoed unheard throughout the floors because the Brandenbergs were all huddled, trembling and thinking about God, 15 feet underground in the basement among three-legged Chippendale chairs and torn tapestries. When the bomb was discovered that afternoon while taking an inventory of their jewelry, it was standing straight up in the remnants of the toilet, held in a jagged china cup that kept the detonator-nipple from compressing.

Rather than call someone to remove the bomb, someone who would likely covet their belongings and force them to barter their wealth for the intruder's removal, they chose to live with it. It lurked like an unwanted house guest, forever occupying the master bathroom, and forcing compromises among the family for the remaining three toilets. The bomb finally discharged when a much larger one hit the street two blocks away. The explosion rocked the area so violently that the bomb fell backward out of the cup, somersaulted over its tail, rolled up onto its nose and the detonator slid smoothly into place.

The blast was spectacular. Because the open skylight allowed for the quick release of pressure, the explosion went upward, not out, taking the whole of the roof with it, and only part of the walls, dispersing them into the wind where the tiles and brick formed a great rust plume that littered their doorstep.

In the week that followed, the house became a stop along the path of families who strolled between bombings, like the natives in South America who mysteriously knew when and when not to play in piranha-infested waters. They would gather silently for a bit in the rubble and look up at the house on the street that now looked more like a 400 year-old castle after a long siege and numerous catapult attacks. "Be thankful it didn't hit us," the mothers said to their children. "Serves 'em right," the fathers told their wives. "I wonder what they did with the bodies," the children said to each other.

On one quiet afternoon a family stopped on a small pile of rubble and gazed up at the wall. The top was torn and jagged and dipped in one point permitting a glimpse of the still elaborately papered walls of the bathroom. And then Mother Brandenberg looked out the bathroom window. The parents pointed at her.

"Go away," she waved at them.

They stared at her as she stood at the window with no roof over her head.

"Go away, you filthy beggars."

"She's got no right to say that," the father said.

"We're not beggars," yelled the mother, shaking her fist.

Mother Brandenberg responded by plucking a brick off her wall and tossing it down at them. It shattered at their feet, shooting fragments of brick into the bare shins of the children. The mother immediately shoveled up the children and headed up the street. The father followed them, walking quickly, backward, with a brick in his hand like a tail-gunner.

And across the street stood Alec, witness to that and all the affairs of the Brandenbergs. He stood in the iron doorway of his warehouse with an unlit cigar butt in his lips and his burly arms across his chest.

"I've always hated them," the father said to Alec, careful to turn to face him directly when he spoke.

Alec nodded his shiny bald head in understanding.

I know, Alec signed.

The next day all the rubble was gone. The street was clean: every last chip of brick and plaster had been carried or swept away in the night. This caused a sensation in the Zone because everyone knew the Brandenbergs never left their home. No one had seen them since the bombings began. It became even more remarkable as Mother Brandenberg became a more prolific and accurate shot. She soon took to heaving bricks at every passer-by and was sure to hit anyone who stopped to look. She paced the top floor of her house, visible now and again through the windows, like a duck in a shooting gallery. And when someone came near, she tore a brick from the wall and heaved-ho. Often the brick splattered into dust on the pavement but she did hit people. Somehow she never managed to break any bones; she would land a hit in the chest or thighs and flatten her target. Afterwards she would dance wildly, flailing around on the top floor, or the roof as it could be called, hooting and hollering that she hit one. This produced much anger but more fear in the Zone. And the next day would bring a clean street.

No lights were permitted at night, so anyone could be collecting the scraps. Some suspected that Mother Brandenberg was collecting them to make into new projectiles but this theory was usually overruled by the thought that the Brandenbergs never left the confines of their home. This led to speculation that their canned-food supply soon would be running out and they'd begin feeding on the errant children that play in the Zone after nightfall.

Still, people wouldn't come here at all if it weren't for Alec. Alec made it into a game. He dodged the incoming bricks calmly, slowly and deliberately as he approached the wall. He would then look straight up the wall at her and wait for the next one to come down. Mother Brandenberg never yelled when Alec was around, not that he'd be able to hear her anyway. And she never really threw a brick at him either. It was more of a toss, a carefully launched projectile covering its delicate trajectory. She looked down at him, held the brick between him and her eyes, and then dropped it. Alec stared up at it, watching it grow larger, imagining the Doppler effect, waiting for the hair-line patterns of the brick to become visible, and then stepped aside only inches to let it shatter on the ground.

This would go on for an hour or so, to the infinite enjoyment of the children, until she had exhausted her supply of bricks. Alec could then feel her smashing something heavy against the wall, destroying the top floor of her own house in an attempt to loosen more bricks. He would then walk away confidently, his back to the house, like a bull-fighter from victory.

And the next morning would bring another clean street.

Cliff, like so many others, came to accept the midnight cleanings as one of the mysteries of wartime no different from the fact that bombs wreak damage though they seem to appear from no where; areas just randomly exploded. In the morning twilight he passed by the Brandenberg's to Alec's on his way to work, and in this way he saw it all happen.

Cliff sorted garbage for recycling. It wasn't long after the bombings started that supplies began to run short. Food immediately became scarce, but so did nails and wire for repairing damaged homes and automobile and bicycle parts for transportation. The garbage men never came once the bombings started and the mess soon started piling up around people's homes. Word got around the Zone that Alec was organizing a garbage collection and needed volunteers. Cliff decided to join.

At the first meeting in Alec's warehouse, the orientation, Alec explained the plans to everyone by writing on a chalkboard. They were to bring everything here early in the morning, in the dark so the helicopters and snipers could not see them, and then separate the goods during the day. He would teach them to separate and to see the usable in the discarded and he would see that they were fed and provide a bath for them at the end of the day to be sure they were disinfected. What was recycled would be sold to keep them in food and clean clothes and a small salary, whenever possible.

He gave them a quick tour of the warehouse. He showed them the thirty bicycles, rigged with tall, light trailers, which would be used to go house-to-house collecting the unwanted goods. He showed them the battery-powered conveyer belt that went through the middle of the warehouse and the racks of truck batteries that would drive it, themselves recharged by a complicated copper/nickel solar collector he had on the roof. During the day they would stand on each side of the belt and pull things from it and put them into bins and drums behind them. Then the contents could be refurbished, fixed, burned, melted, or just plain re-sold to get them back into the Zone's feeble economy.

As Cliff was leaving the orientation, Alec tapped Cliff on the shoulder and signed, Thank you. He signed back that he was proud to be here.

I know who you are, he went on.

Mother mentioned you a few times. She said you would do things like this.

I miss her.

Cliff's mother and father died from a bomb that hit while they in their video rental store. Alec knew Cliff's mother from monthly group meetings. Cliff knew everyone in the group except Alec, whom his mother never mentioned except by accident. His father suspected them from what Cliff could tell from the lengthy silences that ensued after the mention of Alec's name. But he would never entertain the thought of his mother being unfaithful to his father though would he, it was reassuring to think that it would be for a wise and enterprising man.

She spoke of you at every meeting.

Did she mention my father? Cliff poked curiously.

Often, he responded, providing not a clue. It will be good working with you. Will you help me translate? The chalkboard is very slow to work with.

Yes.

Their friendship grew into that of colonel and lieutenant of the garbage legionnaires. Within a week the thirty bicycle seats were filled with volunteers and the discarded items came flowing in. Cliff traipsed around on Alec's heels translating his knowledge of recycling to all who would listen. Soon people were pulling the food and tossing it into bins for conversion to methane products. Metal in an unusable form was crated off to be melted and paper to be shredded and soaked.

Because he had been witness to all his lessons, Alec often left Cliff at the end of the conveyer belt while he took care of private business. There Cliff was to make sure the only things that hit the end of the line were the truly unusable plastics, the detritus and the feculent; those things that must be buried. Alec also had him watching, secretly, for coffee grounds and tobacco.

Coffee and tobacco simply could not be found in the Zone. Shipments of these never arrived unless they were brought by the misguided traveller or the opportunistic and dangerous free-marketeers. When either was found, he was to trace it up the line to see from whose bike it came. Usually he was able to find the source by examining the bicycle's trailer. By checking the depth at which the grounds were found, like an urban archeologist, he could determine roughly where on that person's route the coffee or tobacco came from. Then Alec and he would hop on bicycles and race to the spot. Once there, Alec and he bartered for the goods the people inevitably denied having. Alec had a talent for bartering, mostly because he loved children. Though he brought fruit and watches with him in a rucksack to bargain with, it was always the wooden toys he carved that got them what they came for. All he had to do was find the children in the house and bribe them. By the time he was through, the children were in such a frenzy over the toys, the parents quickly forked over the goods as if to stifle the twitching heroin addict this visitor had made. Still, Alec always left the fruit as well.

Back at the warehouse people cheered and celebrated as much for the coffee or tobacco they knew they were about to share in, but also because Alec and Cliff had survived. Runs like those in the light of day brought gunfire from snipers and helicopters that prowled the Zone. At most, they caught shards of brick, plaster or metal in their backs that were not so much painful as annoying, like splinters.

Cliff watched the line for a bit one afternoon, answered a few questions about this odd object and that, speculating with the others as to what it might have been part of originally and why anyone would have bought it to begin with. These days, the ownership of superfluous objects took on a petulant air now that the staples were so hard to come by. The haughty gossiping about the habits of others helped to keep everyone's spirits high while they were elbow-deep in rubbish.

Soon it would be time to quit so he went to the office to review the collection routes for the next morning. In the office, Alec stood looking through binoculars out a small window at the Brandenberg's house. He watched for a long time, a voyeur perhaps, a spy, maybe wondering if they had Cuban cigars. He watched them with the kind of nervous concentration in his elbows that suggested he was doing something he shouldn't. He backed out of the office and then pounded on the door hard enough to signal he was coming in. Alec was now seated at his desk, which was covered with wood shavings and little toys that moved when cranked.

The routes, Cliff signed a little awkwardly.

Alec looked at him as if sniffing his awkwardness and handed them over. Cliff sat down in the chair opposite the desk. He was too dirty to worry about the wood shavings that covered it.

Alec knocked on the desktop. Do you miss your parents? He wanted to know. His eyebrows were arched high.

Yes.

Your mother said you were a lonely child. She said you always kept to yourself.

Not really, Cliff signed back. But I never spent much time with them. I was always at the library hunting down sheet music or at the studio. I had my own little world and they let me live in it. I guess we never thought there was any real threat. Death is meant to come slowly, after sickness and a thorough examination.

Do you still play?

Not in a long time. I am here all the time, remember?

What is it like, playing music?

My father once described it to my mother as "like watching children play together." It made her cry.

Alec smiled. Yes. I'm sorry I never met your father. She said that if it weren't for him, she would have resented you for your interest in music. She thought it was terrible that you loved something she couldn't understand, but she knew it would be worse to keep you from it for selfish reasons.

What family do you have?

He grinned slowly and let his eyes wander around his desk. They found a cigar butt in the ashtray. He lit the butt by holding it over a candle flame. He put the butt in his mouth leaned back in his chair ceremoniously and spread his arms wide to say, I have all of this.

Cliff laughed and Alec wheezed.

The next day Cliff arrived to work with all his usual regularity only to find Alec had locked him out of the office. He pounded a few times to wake up Alec whom he supposed was sleeping. Alec stuck his bald head out the door at him and grinned. He pushed Cliff away and shook his finger at him as if Cliff was trying to see what his Christmas present was. Shoo! he signed.

Cliff walked away to the assembly line to help people begin unloading into the hopper which shook the piles loose so that the bits could be rifled through easily. Soon he was busy identifying useful fragments and sorting along side the others and he quickly forgot about Alec's mischief.

An hour later he got a tap on the shoulder.

"Yes?" A quiet young woman stood looking him in the eye. She handed him a piece of paper that said "Cliff will teach you how to work the line."

He signed to her, I'm Cliff.

"What?" she said.

He looked over at the office where Alec was wheezing himself sick.

"I'm sorry. I . . . never mind. I'm Cliff."

"I know. Alec said you were going to teach me how to work the line."

"Of course," he said and looked at her, dumb. Her face was dirty beneath her rusty-brown hair which was cropped unevenly in a bowl shape. She had a blonde mole on her temple and baby fat that persisted under her chin though her hollow cheeks suggested she hadn't eaten in days. "Would you like something to eat first?"

"God, no, Alec just fed me until next week."

"Oh, so you weren't . . ."

"What?"

"Never mind. Here. Stand here."

He handed her some gloves and a bib and gave her ridiculously copious instructions. When he went into elaborate detail about the usefulness of the garbage he got poked in the ribs by the women next to them which made him jump and fuss until he finally gave the whole matter a rest and headed off to the end of the line. He worked there by himself for the balance of the day, alone, chastising himself for his over-anxiousness.

As always he was the last one out of the men's shower. After distributing the next morning's routes and dealing with the usual assortment of employee-relation problems which mostly stemmed from so-and-so crowding too much on the line, he was the last one in the men's shower. It was his baptism at the end of each day.

After he changed into his street clothes he came out just as the new woman came out of the womens' showers. She was pinkish and warm-looking now in her overalls and boots.

"Hello, Cliff," she grinned as if it were a joke to be talking and not signing. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets. Her face went a little sad. "I'm Maggie."

"Yes."

"I haven't bathed in days. It felt so good. You don't suppose Alec minds that I took so long, do you?"

"You haven't bathed in days?"

"Yeah. I mean if you don't have running water, you can't exactly run out to the beach with all the helicopters on patrol, can you?"

"No."

They stood there between the bathrooms like banditos waiting for the other to draw. He grin-shrugged and started slowly for the door and she walked next to him. Alec was no where to be found so he locked up his office and peeped through the warehouse door. The coast was clear.

"Going my way?" he said, nodding left.

"Yeah, sure."

He opened the door and they slid out quietly. He locked the door behind them and they jogged quickly past the Brandenbergs', to the corner lot. There, they huddled under a small awning that had been placed in such a way as to allow sight in all directions, but couldn't be seen from overhead. He explained where he was going from there and she said she was going the same way. "Great," he said, and they ran for the next rest stop, a gutted convenience store.

They had to run at full tilt to the convenience store because it was across the largest open area, about a mile and a half. There were no trees or buildings to hide in so they had to run the whole way. She kept up with him easily and quietly.

Inside the convenience store they gasped and watched their breath puff out in the cold. Their noses were running and they giggled surreptitiously when they reached for their sleeves. They had to sit down.

"So where do you go from here?" she asked.

He supplied the answer with the same amount of detail that had gotten him in trouble on the line. It seemed he had developed this habit of talking endlessly to this woman to make her interested when he knew that the opposite was always true. He was simultaneously thinking this and blabbering away when she interrupted: "Can I stay with you?"

"What?"

"The fact is I don't have a place to stay. I just got here, by mistake actually. I was hitching a ride with these free-marketeers and I didn't understand what they were saying so I ended up here and I don't have a place to stay."

She paused for a moment, gauging his blank look.

"Alec said you were real nice."

"Yeah, sure. Why didn't you just ask?"

"Well, I kinda just did."

"OK." He tried not to think, not to over-think at any rate. "OK . . . let's go."

The rest of the way was in and out of abandoned apartment complexes and looted strip malls. His apartment, or his apartment building as the case was since no one lived in the area, was next to an oil rig whose pump had been blasted over on its side like an immense amputated grasshopper. The upstairs had two walls and three-quarters a roof which provided a terrific view of the ocean with protection from overhead.

He boiled some water on a stove he had carefully placed so as to contain all light and heat and thereby avoid detection from snipers.

"Why do you go to all the trouble of cooking in this room? Why not just cook downstairs where you're sure no one will see you?"

"After all the dealing with the nuisances of war, I was not going to give up the view and smell of the ocean. That's why I'm here. That's probably why all the people who work the line are still here. They could have gone inland, away from the ocean, away from the oil and away from the bombings. I just can't live anywhere else."

"So you risk being shot þ or worse þ for the smell of the ocean."

Cliff grinned in the dark. "Me heap big brave stubborn martyr."

"Cliff heap big dumbass."

He made some coffee he had snuck out of Alec's office. She shook her head, smiling, and said, "tsk-tsk, Cliff," when he handed her the cup.

He grabbed a blanket for each of them and sat her down at the edge of the floor where they hung their feet off the edge and banged their heels on the wall. The moon was big and baleful over the ocean, blotchy-grey in the cloudless night. They looked over the area quietly, sighing at the view and the smell of coffee and ocean, huggy-warm in their blankets, kicking away like children and feeling naughty for being out in the open where the snipers might get them.

"You hitch-hiked here?" he reconvened.

"Well, sort of. I didn't know how to hide, I only knew how to run. Sooner or later I knew I would need help; I couldn't stay alive by myself. So I ran with these guys who were going around rounding up weapons and were going to sell them. I didn't know they were going into the Zone! Who the hell wants to go into the Zone?"

He nodded down at the side-swiped grasshopper in the field next to them. She gave him a rib, as if to say it was OK to be in the Zone, though it wasn't.

"What about your parents?" She looked young enough to have parents to worry about or to worry about her. This made her stare at the moon.

"Well," she said confidently, feigning matter-of-factness, "I had to run after they were killed."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too."

"How did you avoid being killed?"

"They didn't know I was there. I was in the basement, hiding on a shelf. But I could hear them upstairs. My parents were amazing." She sipped coffee with her hands laced around the cup. Her fingernails were bitten back to a reasonable length. "They told them 'he's away at college.' They didn't want their baby girl raped, I guess. War brings that out in men, you know, rape."

She gave him a slow once-over like she didn't know him anymore and then smiled as if she suddenly recognized him again.

"I heard the shots," she said casually.

Cliff blinked hard and felt sick to his stomach. He leaned forward over his knees.

"No," she said, "it's supposed to be foul. It'll go away, though. Here, drink some coffee."

She rubbed her hand in the nape of his neck and put her forehead to his shoulder.

"What? War is all dodge ball and refuse?" She looked at his face. "People die, Cliff."

"I know that."

"I try not to think about it emotionally. It's too hard to think about with emotion. Even so, it still wears me out thinking about it."

She stretched out on the floor.

"I'll bet you have plenty of horror stories, being in the Zone for so long."

"Not now," he shook his head. He didn't want to think about them.

"No. I know. Not now," she said and covered herself with the blanket.

He looked down at her on the floor, cuddled up fetal-like, her chopped hair shiny and messy in the moonlight, tufts pointing everywhere, like a sea urchin, above the blanket.

"You're nice," she said.

"Thanks."

"I'm real tired. Can we sleep here?"

"It's the only place to sleep."

In times of war coffee only serves as a reminder of civility and of manners, of good shared experiences and warmth, not as a stimulant, and they fell asleep quickly and soundly. In the Zone, though, morning comes quickly. They jogged back to Alec's occasionally bumping shoulders along the way.

Inside the warehouse they parted quickly, as if they didn't know each other, Maggie to change and take her place on the line, Cliff to Alec's office to prepare for the day.

In the office, Alec was at the tiny window again, peering out through binoculars. Cliff started to back out again but Alec turned around. When he brought the binoculars down from his face his eyes were swollen and red.

What's wrong? Cliff moved forward and stopped at the edge of Alec's desk.

Alec smiled as if it were silly to cry, but his eyes were too serious. Alec put down the binoculars and raised his arms slowly. His hands curled up and then he signed, It's my sister's birthday.

That's what's wrong?

Yes.

And you can't see her, is that what's wrong?

Yes, Alec signed.

Alec sat down at his desk. Three wooden toys were lined up neatly on his desk, one, a ballerina in a pink dress that flayed upward and he turned the crank, spinning her.

Cliff tapped on the desk. I'm sorry. I hate this war.

Don't blame the war. It's not the war. Never blame a war. Blame people. Don't let your anger become abstract. We are working class people, Cliff. If you tell yourself you are a blue collar worker then you make the idea of class abstract and it is not abstract, it is real. We sit here and the Brandenbergs sit behind their walls, in their wealth. There are classes. And there is a war. But blame people for both. And it is good to know their names as well. It's not the war. It's people. People keep this war going. People are keeping me from my sister.

Alec was signing frantically, pounding on the table with every "people." Cliff waited for Alec to take a couple of breaths.

What is your sister's name?

Alec smiled. Christina. She is 10.

Is she far away?

Forever.

I'm sorry.

Alec nodded and put the toys on a shelf next to dozens of other toys. He had made toys that spun down ladders, that rolled little wooden balls along gravity-defying rails, that danced, that boxed; simple toys that were magical because they were handmade.

You have a birthday soon.

In a few weeks, Cliff signed.

Alec wiped his wet face into a grin. I will throw you a party.

No.

Yes. Yes. You are my family and I am yours. This I will do for you.

No.

Alec shook a finger at him, continuing the half-hearted argument, the obligatory denial the guest of honor must provide. Yes. There will be drinks . . .

Drinks? How?

Watch . . . Watch. I am Alec. Alec laughed his awful wheeze. And there will be dancing to music. A big party for you.

Cliff shook his head, wandering around the room, kicking up wood dust. There couldn't be dancing. Dancing is noisy, you silly bald man.

Alec slapped Cliff's black mop. I know how to get you people to dance.

I look forward to seeing an old man like you dance.

A challenge . . . I love a challenge. Alec slapped the crown of Cliff's head again.

And it will be on the beach.

You are a crazy man. That is dangerous.

Are you afraid?

Are you trying to kill me? Cliff slapped Alec's bald pate a good one.

Alec retaliated by rubbing a handful of dust into Cliff's hair. You will see. Now I shall announce it to everyone.

Alec left Cliff dusty and spinning in the office alone and went out to stop all the work to tell everyone of the big party. Cliff remained and shook his hair clean. He picked up the little ballerina off the shelf and went to the window. He had to squint a little, but he could see a few bodies moving back and forth in the windows of the Brandenberg house. Cliff held the ballerina up to the sun that was starting to shine through the window and spun her until her dress started to fly.

In the weeks that followed Cliff and Maggie spent all their free time together. Mostly this meant their breaks were taken together, which caused endless speculation among the gossiping hoards of line workers. Gossip was seen as a good thing during war, even encouraged, because it let people's minds wander past their own misery and on to the mischief of others. Yes, they had taken to living together, but they were yet to sleep together. A pair is always suspect when they spend time together. But instead they served to fill the other's nervous void of family and friends. When something odd or mysterious came down the line, they shared the wonder together. When loneliness crept in through the wide open spaces of Cliff's apartment, they put on another blanket and held each other tight. It wasn't so much that didn't want to have sex. It just never really occurred to them when the time was right.

On the line, Cliff and Maggie took a lot of ribbing. Folks were happy for them, and took it as joshing when they explained that nothing was going on. To a certain extent, they encouraged it because they were not adamant about its denial. And as the date of the party approached, it took on the festive air of a wedding. Alec and others began sneaking around, conversations stopped at Cliff's approach and at Maggie's as well. The week of the party Cliff was formally banned from Alec's office for reasons no one would explain. Work slowed down almost to a stop but no one seemed to care. People were searching the line for party favors, not to separate goods.

On the day of Cliff's birthday, he was awaken with a kiss and a blueberry muffin Maggie had made from a package Alec found for her. The muffin had a solitary candle in it, lighting up her round smiling face.

"I made something for you."

"When?"

"Some manager you are. I haven't worked on the line in days. I've been in Alec's office almost the whole time."

"You're kidding."

"Here."

She handed him a package wrapped in cloth that looked like it was once a drape in a whorehouse.

"I know . . . it's all I could find."

"I love it."

Cliff untied the cloth and let it fall on the bed. Inside was a wooden flute, its every inch etched with delicate petals and vines.

"Alec said you never play anymore."

"How did you make this thing? It's gorgeous."

"Alec showed me. The guy's incredible. He really didn't know anything about flutes but he found me a book on how to make them, right down to the diameters of the holes. I still don't know how it sounds."

"It's really beautiful."

"C'mon . . . play it for me."

Cliff gave the mouthpiece a rub. It was smooth, soft, the feel of well-worked, unfinished wood. He sat up straight in the bed and ran quietly up a scale and down.

"Pretty."

"Louder. More."

Cliff worked a quick B flat major scale and then a few arpeggios up and down, louder and then into a bourree. The fingerings were clumsy but the phrasing felt comfortable and because the sound had been lost for so long, even if it had been awful, it still would have been splendid.

They two of them sat there in the misty morning with tears in their eyes. "Thank you," they said to each other.

Though this party promised to be quite an event in the Zone it was still typical in that everyone wanted to go, but no one wanted to help set up. Maggie and Alec had taken it upon themselves to provide all the arrangements and as a result were left to provide all the preparations. Maggie rationalized that since this was never announced as a "surprise" party, it therefore followed that Cliff could help set up. Thus she had at least one recruit to help out that day. First they would go to Alec's to load up the bicycles and then to the beach to set up the site.

When they arrived at Alec's, Cliff was shown the other reasons why he was not allowed to see the office. While Maggie was whittling away, raisin jack was fermenting on the shelves. Rows and rows of mason jars were stacked on the shelves, each covered with cloth to allow a little air in and the excess explosive gases out. One of tasks of the day was to strip the top layer of mold from the jars and to pour the jack into a larger container where it could be mixed with some other fruit juices to make the drink palatable.

That should make the party lively, Alec signed.

The fumes will make you drunk.

Come. Look at this.

Alec led them him to the corner of the office where he took the top off a barrel. Inside it were hundreds and hundreds of AA batteries.

Batteries?

Alec's eyes aimed for the ceiling.

For your Walkmans. You put them in your Walkmans and you dance.

Alec had thought it all out. When evening came they rode the bicycles undetected to the beach. There Alec made a fire pit and showed Cliff and Maggie how to set up the scrims. They had brought several long poles and heavy cloth died black to string between them. Once carefully arranged, they would block out all light from the fire while allowing the party to go on in the middle. The batteries would power the portable cassette players that would provide the music for everyone. To dance, you found yourself a partner, plugged your headphones into the same cassette player and went. Then, while everyone danced to different music, everyone else could get drunk on raisin jack and laugh at the lack of unified rhythm in the dancers. Of course the batteries wouldn't last long since they came off the line and were recharged only as best as they could, but Alec had worked hard to find hundreds; once spent they could easily be replaced with semi-fresh ones.

Naturally, people started showing up immediately after they were through setting up. They all brought gifts for Cliff, little gifts, ceramic doo-dads and sculptures, and other gifts, silverware, plates, pictures, paintings and vases that started to occupy that grey area between birthday gifts and wedding presents. It didn't help that Cliff and Maggie were standing together when people arrived or that, though it was possible to enter from any side, people all arrived through a single portal as if in a receiving line.

Before even half the crowd had arrived people were dipping deep into the raisin jack and dancing feverishly. Cliff dropped in a speedy number into his own tape player. When Maggie heard it she calmly replaced it with a classic slow tune she had borrowed from one of the older women.

"I like it when you hug me at night. If we dance close to your music, I'm likely to lose a limb," Maggie explained.

They danced slowly for a long while when finally they got a tap on the shoulder from Alec.

Let me see you do some of that fast dancing now.

They smiled and obliged with Cliff's original tape. The headphone wires kept them from wandering apart which took some getting used to considering their usual dancing habits. Alec watched, smiling and sitting in the sand by the scrim.

When the tape ended they went to Alec.

You look like your feet are burning when you dance. Is that what music makes you do?

You just do what you feel.

You feel the music?

In front of Maggie, Cliff always spoke while he signed so that she would feel part of the conversation. She made herself part of it by taking Cliff's headphones and putting them on Alec.

"Can you feel it?" she said to him.

Alec shook his head.

Maggie turned the sound up louder. He started to nod. She turned it up louder, so loud she had to put her headphones around her neck. He was getting it.

Maggie grabbed Alec by the hand and tugged him off his ass, out to where they could dance. She took his other hand and guided him. They were moving around everyone, and he was jiggling this part and that, half to the rhythms in his head, half in imitation of those he had been watching. Everyone clapped out of rhythm and cheered. Alec was grinning wildly, swinging, trying to jitterbug with Maggie and getting the wires all tangled up. It didn't matter. Alec was a dancing fool now.

Alec let Maggie go and he danced with everyone. He nearly caused eardrum damage to the entire crowd of women because he had to turn the sound up so loud. But they all went along gladly, headphones around their neck, and still loud enough to dance to.

Cliff and Maggie resigned themselves to the edge of the scrims, holding each other in the half-darkness, necking occasionally when the dancing went mostly slow.

For all of Alec's strength, he finally had to sto1 -ing. His great bald head was wet like a giant raindrop and his shirt was soaked. He found Cliff and Maggie and grabbed them both by the neck and kissed them loudly on the cheeks.

This is wonderful, he signed. You two are wonderful. I am going for a walk by the ocean. Maybe I'll go for a swim.

Be careful.

Alec slapped them both and then walked out between the scrims.

From the edge of the party the dancing looked tribal. Pairs shook together, hands up high, out at the sides, bound to each other rotating slowly around the fire while moving rapidly together. The scrims nearly created a room of blackness. Carefully placed, from outside the borders there was no way to directly see the fire. A scrim was stretched over the fire, some 20 feet up, and the walls overlapped just enough to avoid a direct line from the beach or the water. In this, people carried on with a strong feeling of safety. The lashing flames cut into the darkness like so many strobe lights, giving their movements added speed and a sense of slow motion.

The crowd was familiar; there weren't many people left in the Zone. Mostly they were older, but young enough to remember how to dance with that strange sense of glee and anger necessary to enjoy a Walkman.

Cliff and Maggie were cooling their butts in the sand with their impatient feet battling each other like bulldozers. Cliff felt Maggie tug the tape player from his belt and watched her walk around the edge of the crowd to the other side to where, from what he could tell from the flickering images between the dancers, a young girl sat with a toy soldier between her knees. Maggie knelt there with her and tried to coax her into a conversation, apparently without luck. She did manage, however to get her to share the headphones, but they did not dance.

Cliff's mind suddenly started to wander into the realm of adulthood: admiring in Maggie her sense of motherhood and caring, her ability to leave Cliff without a word to talk to someone else, a child no less. He started to wonder about fatherhood, about this woman, about what this all really meant to them. Did fear and suffering breed unrestricted compassion? Would he care about her under normal circumstances? Were these not normal circumstances? No matter the answer, the fact was that he and all the others were frightened and the closeness of another brought with it a sense of normalcy and humanity. Though this meant to him a flight into hedonism when he might ordinarily seek more a traditional sense of morality, it helped him get to the next day and that was all he could ask of life right now. Except for another cup of raisin jack.

From a bicycle trailer Karl, the oldest among them þ the mysteriously continuously drunkest among them þ dispensed raisin jack happily from a the spigot at the bottom of a wooden barrel. Cliff took it in a tin military cup.

"To your health, Karl."

"To my death!"

"Ah, Karl . . ."

". . . May it be polite."

"All right, Karl. To a polite death."

Cliff took a sip of the sweet and sour mix.

He felt a tug on his shirt sleeve. He turned to see the girl, dirty, in clothes too good to be among this crowd, raven-colored hair, an even face, holding a badly worn wooden soldier, and Maggie who looked markedly disturbed.

"I'd like you to meet someone, Cliff. This is Tina. Tina, this is my friend, Cliff."

Cliff and Maggie shared a long look.

"And this . . ." Maggie knelt down and put a hand around the girl's hands and the soldier, "is her best friend, Alec."

Maggie gave Cliff another look, nodding I know, I know.

Cliff crouched. "We have a friend here named Alec, did you know that?"

The girl looked at him, her eyes a little wider.

"Do you know Alec?" Cliff added.

She pushed the soldier hard against her belly.

"Do you want to meet Alec?"

The girl stayed quiet. He looked at Maggie. Maggie nodded hard.

"I'll go find Alec," he said, standing.

"And I'll watch the women, Cliff," Karl piped up. Karl put down his cup and stepped down out of the trailer.

"No, really, Karl."

"I insist there, Cliff."

And with all the elegance of a courtly gentleman, Karl took Tina by the hand and led her into the cart as if Cinderella into the coach. He picked her up by her hips and placed her carefully atop the barrel. He then continued the procession with Maggie, guiding her into the cart, positioning her next to the barrel. He took his seat on the bicycle which was stuck firmly in the sand and going no place with this cargo.

"Shall we take a ride through the forest, M'ladies?"

Cliff watched Karl antics for a moment, with one hand on a post that supported the scrim. The post, he could feel, hummed lightly in the wind. Then, all at once, he felt a quick succession of twitches in the post, as if someone were throwing small rocks into the cloth and then he was tackled from behind, hard, and pushed face down into the sand. He turned his face to the side, where he could breathe and he heard the sound, the plut-plut of bullets tearing into flesh. The bullets were coming from far away; no explosion came with them, just the sound of them opening people, but not him.

Alec had tackled Cliff to get him safely to the ground. He turned Cliff over. Alec was drenched from swimming and signing frantically in his face.

A helicopter is here . . . I saw it coming . . . I saw it coming.

They sat up and looked over the fire. The shooting had stopped and the screaming had begun. People were strewn everywhere in the sand, low around the fire pit and at the edge of the scrims.

Alec had his hands over his head and was rocking on his knees. A wheezing moan started to come out of him. He grabbed Cliff by the shoulders and turned him around.

I saw the helicopter. Then I ran here. I ran here. The helicopter followed me here. First I brought you here, then I brought the helicopter here. God. God!

Alec started to rock again. He put his hands over his head and put his head toward his knees.

Maggie!

Cliff looked for the bicycle. It had fallen over on its side away from the fire. Cliff ran to it, through the huge puddle of jack that had spilled out toward the fire from the initial impact of the bullets. Karl was there, lying over Maggie and Tina as if to hide them.

"Karl?" he said in the sticky puddle. "Karl?" he repeated, stopped and stunned.

Karl turned his head but would not lift his face to Cliff."Stay there, Cliff, don't come here."

"Karl?"

"Don't come here, Cliff."

Cliff breathed out heavily, irregularly. "Tell me, Karl."

"I'm so ashamed, Cliff."

Alec appeared at Cliff's shoulder. He suddenly looked shorter than he did before. He looked down at Karl and the girls and then went to them. Karl looked up at Alec's face. Karl's face was filled with fear. Alec grabbed his shoulder and removed him. He now moved deliberately, like a condemned man anxious to see his sentence. Cliff watched him from the other side of the trailer. Alec sunk to the sand and put his head to the bodies at his knees. Karl moaned heavily to the sky. A sad, angry wheeze arose from behind the trailer and Alec stood with the body of Christina in his arms. His fingers curled around her thin shoulder and thigh covered with blotches that were dark and indistinguishable in the firelight. He moved her forehead to his and shuffled out between the scrims.

Karl put his hands out in the direction of the exiting Alec and opened his mouth wide and made not a sound. After a moment he put his fingers to his eyes and cried.

Cliff moved slowly to Maggie and stood abo ''  -* ulders.

"Don't you think it's time we left here, Cliff? Don't you think we've had enough? I'm so tired, Cliff."

Cliff watched Karl's soup boil on the stove-top.

"I don't think I can do this to people any more, Cliff."

"You're not doing anything, Karl. It's not you. You're just there, Karl."

"Exactly. And when I'm there, people die."

"I was there, too. What does that mean?"

"If they were with you they'd be here. But they were with me instead."

"C'mon, Karl, you sound like Alec. He thinks he brought the helicopter there."

"Why does he think that?"

"He saw the helicopter and assumed it saw the party. It didn't, but because he couldn't yell to warn us about it, he ran up the beach to tell us. The problem was, it did see him and chased him up the beach, shooting at him. Then, when he dove under cover of the tent, the bullets missed him and shot . . . everyone else."

"Alec did that?"

"He couldn't tell if the helicopter was after the party or after him."

"What was it after, Cliff?"

Cliff took the hot bowl off the stove with his shirt-tail and rinsed it in the sink. He felt the water run over his hands.

"The helicopter never came back, so I assume it thought it got him. Karl, the helicopter was after Alec."

"So what am I supposed to think about this? Did Alec bring the helicopter there or not?"

"You're not supposed to think anything, Karl. This is war; people die."

"But we all know it's war." Karl turned around to face him. "Alec knew it. He knew we were all being hunted. And he brought them right there to the tent."

"He did what he thought was best for everyone, Karl. The man can't speak and he was trying to warn us. He was trying to help us, not himself."

Karl shook his head slowly. "That's very bad judgement."

"'That's very bad judgement'? That's an interesting comment from someone who thought his ride through the emerald forest was responsible for the death of Maggie and Tina."

Karl's silhouette shrunk in the moonlight. Cliff sipped at the remainder of the coffee. Alec didn't show at the ceremony and Cliff began to speculate at where else he might have buried her. Karl sat down heavily in the chair in front of the fire.

"I'm sorry, Cliff. But I don't know what to think."

"Don't think too much, Karl. Just don't forget: his sister died in that attack, too. That was his sister on top of that barrel."

During the night Cliff kept the fire going and they slept intermittently in the darkness. Cliff's stomach hurt badly, like he had been in a fight, and the images of Maggie's face, her hair sticky and spikey from the mixture of raisin jack and blood kept him from the peacefulness of sleep.

Soon after the sun came up there was a bang at the door downstairs. Karl shot upright in his chair and Cliff motioned for him to be quiet. They listened again and heard two young boys yelling Cliff's name. Downstairs the boys, Arnold and his handless best friend, Bernard, gave Cliff the news: Alec was attacking the Brandenbergs.

Together they ran to the street where a crowd had gathered in the dawn. The crowd stood along the walls opposite the Brandenberg house and watched Alec work. He was hauling barrels and wheelbarrows full of metal, brick, of clothes, of everything he had in his warehouse and piling it up in front of the house in a huge mound. He must have been working for hours because the pile now stood nearly two storeys high and he had to work with some difficulty to pile the materials atop of what was already there.

Cliff walked past the wall of faces, who were silent, and curious and mysteriously anxious to see what Alec wanted out of all this. Inside the warehouse there was nothing. The floor was swept clean, the shelves were no longer standing, even the conveyer belt had now been used in the pile. Alec appeared from around the corner with the barrel of batteries. He was shirtless, sweaty and his hands were scabbed and bloody.

Why are you doing this?

He set the wheelbarrow to rest. In order to build the pyramids, the slaves had to built huge piles of sand and rubble in order to place the top stones, he signed with difficulty.

You're building a pyramid?

I'm going to climb one.

He picked up the wheelbarrow and unloaded it at the base of the heap and then picked up the wheelbarrow and, spinning like an olympic hammer-thrower, heaved it half-way up. It hit and then tumbled down some before nuzzling itself among the bricks that were collected in the early days of Mother Brandenberg's terrorism.

He passed Cliff and returned to his office. Cliff followed Alec and watched him collect a gadget from the corner. The only other items in the room were the twenty or so wooden toys that were lined up against a wall. Alec tossed the toys to him which Cliff caught, and kept catching until finally he started to drop them. Alec picked up a handful and then pulled Cliff by the shirtsleeve to the warehouse door.

At the warehouse door Alec attached strips of an inner tube to either side and put a toy in a cup at the middle. He then walked backward with the cup, stretching the tubes to their limits, squatted to aim the trajectory and let the cup go. The toy was catapulted across the street and smashed against the wall less than two feet from a second storey window. Alec grabbed another from Cliff and this time shot a boxing toy through the window. Alec wheezed.

Cliff dropped the toys and signed, Why are you doing this?

I want them to have these toys. They should have these toys.

What have they done to you? Why are you shooting these toys?

I made them for my sister.

Where is your sister?

She is dead, didn't you see?

Of course I saw. Where did you take her?

She is buried now, with the rest of my family.

Where?

In the mausoleum.

What mausoleum?

Alec spelled it out slowly: In the Brandenberg Mausoleum.

That is your family?

Alec let another one fly.

Couldn't you tell?

Of course not. How could I tell?

Why do you think they locked themselves in there? They weren't afraid of the war. They were ashamed of me. Now they're frightened of me. They let my sister rot in there. They never let me see her.

How can you say that? They're just scared, like everybody else.

You don't know that. You can't know that. They are ashamed of me. I was in homes all my life. They thought I was retarded. They thought I was violent. They didn't want my sister to know me.

Have you been living here all this time to terrorize them?

I have been living here to see my sister.

You forced her to sneak out at night. You forced the whole family to sneak around you.

You don't know what I did.

You've frightened them this whole time.

You don't know. I just wanted them to let me see my sister. But they despised me. They were ashamed because I'm mute.

What have you done?

You think you know? Do you really want to know?

Alec marched to the back of the warehouse and grabbed the last remaining article: a ladder. He returned and grabbed Cliff with his free hand and together they climbed the heap.

Alec led, dragging the ladder, kicking loose rubble down into Cliff's face. Their footing was uncertain because it was so poorly packed and at the top Alec stuck the ladder deep into the pile. The top of the ladder stopped only a foot below the top of the wall where Mother Brandenberg and now another face, a man's, peered frightened over the edge.

A brick, then two came down at them, bouncing off Alec's shoulder and another bruising Cliff's forearm. Alec looked down at him and signalled him to follow. Alec started up the ladder. A brick came down at him, pitifully thrown, which he batted away. They apparently couldn't get them loose, at least not quickly enough, and Alec made the top of the wall without another shot.

Cliff could hear some shuffling on the other side and when he pulled himself over the wall; Alec had his mother by the collar. The woman was at her knees, so frightened she could hardly breathe. Her husband, Alec's father, was frail-looking and huddled in the tub with both hands on the edge.

Ask her why they wouldn't let me see my sister.

Cliff looked at the woman who was leaning forward on her hands. Her hair was short and stuck to her head.

"Ma'am?"

She gasped.

"Ma'am, do you know Alec?"

"Are you going to kill us?" she wouldn't look up.

"No, ma'am." Cliff looked up at Alec who arched his eyebrows. "Do you know Alec."

"What are you going to do to us?"

"Do you think we're going to hurt you?"

"You want our money, isn't that why you're here?"

Cliff knelt down next to the woman. "Ma'am, do you have a daughter?"

"Oh, my God. Has it come to that?" she looked up at Cliff angrily. He remembered Maggie's comment about men and war.

"No, ma'am, Alec just wanted to see his sister."

She sat down on her heels.

"Alec wanted to know why you never let him see his sister."

"Suppose you tell me why he's been roaming around out there like some kind of dog, then. Hunting us like a wolf, watching us all the time, waiting for us to weaken. No, I won't let some animal, some grunting, spitting animal see my daughter."

Cliff turned to Alec. Cliff shook his head.

Couldn't she see what I was doing down there? Alec signed. Couldn't she see what I was doing for everyone? I've been kind to everyone.

You frightened them, Alec.

Tell them what I've done!

"Ma'am, do you know what Alec has been doing?"

"Get out of my house," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, get out of my house. If you're not going to kill us and you don't want our money then get out. Is that clear?"

"Alec is here trying to tell you something."

"I don't care. I want you out. I want you to leave us in peace. I want to be left alone. I cannot live with this fear any longer."

"We just want to talk to you."

"But, you see, I have no desire to talk with you."

Cliff stood up next to Alec. They refuse, he signed.

Alec looked dumbfounded. He reached down and yanked his mother quickly to her feet and dragged her to the edge where there was no wall. He shook her there and pointed down. She screamed at him, trying to push away, begging not to be thrown over. Cliff reached her and started to pull her in. Alec immediately released her.

Why are you pulling her? Alec signed feverishly.

I didn't want you to throw her over.

She ran to her husband and climbed in the tub with him where they watched and shivered.

Throw her over? I wanted to show her the people, the people I have helped. I wanted her to know I am a good person.

But you were frightening her. She thought you were going to throw her over.

And you. What did you think?

That's what it looked like.

Alec dropped his hands to his sides and regarded Cliff. That's what it looked like to you? What did you think I was doing? What do you think of me?

I worried that you hated them for keeping your sister from you. I worried that you blamed yourself for her death.

I do.

I thought you wanted them dead.

Alec closed his eyes and shook his head. He breathed out heavily, tired. He shuffled to the other side of the room, past the four-poster bed and its damp, rotting mattress, past the dusty chairs and cabinets, and descended the stairs to the floor beneath.

The Brandenbergs stayed huddled in their tub, still hateful and angry. Cliff let them sit there and said not a word.

He went down the stairs to the third floor. As he descended into the darkness, the smell of rot and feces started to rise. From the staircase he could see the piles of cans and boxes and filth in the half-lit rooms that connected on all sides. The second floor proved more of the same except that the paintings had all been pulled from the walls and clown faces had been drawn over the portraits of ancestors.

The staircase, when it reached the first floor, led directly to the front door which was slightly ajar from Alec's departure. Cliff pushed the large doors wide open and the breeze and the sunlight cleansed his face and nostrils.

From the doorway he watched Alec pedal slowly down the street, away from the crowd, away from the Zone. The crowd moved in on Cliff who turned his face to the sun and shut his eyes.

"Cliff, what happened, Cliff?" Karl asked.

"Nothing. They're just scared, that's all."

"What do we do? What should we do?"

"Talk," he said. "Go inside and talk to them."