Free Heathern by Jack Womack Page A

lease. After that the street passed through dead
blocks, every building's windows and storefronts boarded up as against the flood. Flowered decals brightened some
windows' blinders. Sprigs of colorless grass sprouted
through the broken sidewalk. So abandoned in haste did all
appear that I imagined entering any of the buildings,
finding coffee still warm in cups, toothpaste still wet upon
brushes, and not even a scrap to show where everyone
went.

    "That your company's mark?" Lester asked, pointing
toward an upper floor. Plastered below the cornices were
block-long posters advertising the new development shortly rising on that lot. They'd missed the target completion
date by three years. It seemed too late to idly seek logos, but
at last I saw what he saw, a small design in no way
resembling Dryco's empyrean leer.
    "Bank of Nippon," I said. "Their mark. These are some
more frozen assets. I'm sure he'll wind up with them
eventually. I've lost track of half of what they have."
    "Do they own everything?" Lester asked, seeming overly
aware of what everything contained.
    "Every business has a little bit of Dryco in it."
    "How'd they do it?" he asked. "Luck? Did they plan it?"
    "Their government reps found out about the revaluation
before it went into effect," I said, explaining it as I'd heard it
from Bernard. "Some of them suggested it. Before it went
through the Drydens'd already traded the old money in for
new bills. They wanted to see their competition in the drug
field out of business as badly as the government did, of
course. When the market crashed Susie was the only one
able to buy. She bought fifty percent of seventy companies.
That was all they needed."
    "What was he doing at the time?"
    "Conferring in Washington," I said. "By sunset the deals
were done. I don't think either of them knew before it
happened how far they'd be able to take it."
    It was such an odd feeling to speak to another without
interruption, certain too that I was being heard. "She seems the more pragmatic of the two," he said. "She knows about
you and-"

    I nodded. "Everybody knows, I think. Sometimes I talk
to Avi about it. Bernard never wants to hear." Somewhere
to the north something blew up. I wondered if we'd find my
house where I'd left it. "Thatcher was sort of a rebound,
after Avi."
    On the side of a building was another aging billboard,
this one older than many. God Sees Those Who Come Unto
Him was the message printed below the photo. Swastikas
were scrawled across the picture's faces, the survivors on
their day of liberation. Avi's father had been in Maidanek
during most of the war. With his family he left Crown
Heights when the Army entered Brooklyn. Avi sent half of
his salary every month to their upstate shtetl. Does he know
how you earn your money? I asked him, on our last night.
    He knows a purpose beyond understanding, Avi replied.
    A guard's supposed to defend. Thatcher says kill and you
go after anyone he wants.
    It's my job.
    Nazi, I called him.
    There's no comparison. The Drydens are like a mother
animal rolling over and suffocating her young as she sleeps.
    They're not so unconscious.
    Nor are you, he said, kissing my hands. I allowed myself
to reenter my unavoidable world. "Joanna?" Lester asked.
"You there?"
    "I'd never thought about Thatcher before," I said. "Not
in that way. Not until later. So much could have been
avoided. I might still be myself."
    "Maybe," said Lester. "They provide maps without
roads. We have to hack our own path."
    "They," I repeated. "Are there really two of Them?"
    "Way I describe it isn't strictly accurate," he said. "Problem of popularizing. Everybody understands, at least, way I
tell it. The split between Their aspects is a decided one, I'm never sure which One I'm hearing until I listen a spell. And
I can always talk to Them, see, but They don't always talk to
me.

    "But you can talk to Them-"
    "Not incessantly," he said, "and They don't tell me