The Stone War

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Authors: Madeleine E. Robins
Tags: Fiction
ears. Briefly Jit thought a kind of peace at them, but the dogs’ grief would not be quieted. He turned his attention back to the trees.
    This was all right for now, the silence. But he would grow lonely. Where was everyone?
    When darkness started to close in on the Park Jit returned to the skating rink, squeezed between the boards again, and started through the tunnels to his cave. He heated another can of stew—when he went to a food place to find food he would have to find cans of fuel for the cooker—and ate it in the sputtering yellow light of the lanterns. He made a fire to cut through the chill, neat stacks of dry twigs piled on the brick floor under the tunnel shaft. He fed the small blaze with carefully gathered and rolled sheets of paper. Every few minutes, staring at the shapeless shadows dancing on the far wall, Jit would reach out again, listening. No one there.
    Finally, bored, he curled up near the dim glow on the hearth and went to sleep. He dreamt of the door again, closed on an empty room.

2

    SUNSHINE woke him: Tietjen moved rustily against the stanchion, cold and stiff, unwilling to untuck himself from the tight curl that had kept the chill out. He shook out his shoulders and wiggled his fingers gingerly: they still worked, that was something. He had rarely slept outdoors. Irene loved camping; during their marriage she had kept brochures on trails and camping equipment; they were always going to spend a week walking the Appalachian Trail or camping in the Blue Ridge, her chance to impress him with the beauty of plants, water, and natural stone.
    He looked at the gnarled mess of the bridge, whole girders skewed and twisted from position, cables waving in the wind. What would Irene make of this?
    When his shoulders were unknotted, Tietjen rose, sliding his back against the girder. He flexed his legs, stiff and sore, discovering new muscles that protested as he crossed the road to look out over the side of the bridge. The day was beautiful, clear and cold like autumn, the sky china blue with large showy clouds that sailed effortlessly toward the Jersey horizon. If he did not turn his head, if he looked straight across the water at New Jersey, Tietjen could believe that nothing had happened. Then he took a deep breath. Morning air stung his nose; there was a strong acrid taste of fire in it, traces of gas, of other things less easily defined but no less frightening. He turned his head for his first daylight glimpse of Manhattan since leaving.
    From the Hudson Bridge he could not see much; the barren gray of leafless Inwood Hill park blocked most of his view. Above the park a long flat bar of smoke hung across the brilliant blue of the morning sky, a gray slash interrupting the scudding clouds. Sunlight reflected crazily off the island beyond the trees, and the dazzle bounced off the smoke, creating an odd sandwich of dark smoke, light, and gray trees. He could see no details, only the layer of smoke from the fires of the night, and the underbelly of light.
    His stomach set up a protesting growl. Tietjen tried to remember when he had last eaten. Breakfast in Whittendale, two days before. He was sure as hell hungry now. He looked one more time out toward New Jersey and the peaceful landscape there. There’d be something to eat in the city. The sooner he started, the sooner he would be fed.
    The phrase caught him up short for a moment; it was an echo of one of Irene’s maxims: “sooner begun, sooner done.” She said it often to the boys.
    He shook his head clear and began walking.
    He had to step carefully around spots where the pavement was torn through; he could see the lower tier of the bridge below and, in places, the dull green flow of Spuyten Duyvil lower still. He had never owned a car, rarely driven in the city, but he had gone over the Henry Hudson Bridge enough times to know that its signs had not been in good repair for years. But the casual neglect he remembered was different from this: some

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