“Jeez, no! I can’t take your food and I can’t take your cart! Isn’t that how you take the shoes you mend to your brother’s store?”
She pointed to Radar and made a number of limping steps, first toward the cart and then back to me. Then she pointed south （if I was right about my directions, that was） and walked her fingers in the air. The first part was easy. She was telling me that the cart was for Radar, once she started to limp. I thought she was also telling me someone—probably her brother—would come for the shoes.
Dora pointed to the cart, then made a little gray fist and hit me lightly in the chest three times: You must.
I saw her point; I had an elderly dog to care for and a long way to go. At the same time, I hated to take any more from her than I already had. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. Then she held out her arms for a hug, which I was happy to give. She then dropped to her knees and hugged Radar. When she stood up again, she pointed first to the road, then to the crisscrossing lines, then to herself.
Get going. I have work to do.
I made my own gesture, two thumbs up, then went to the cart and tossed my knapsack in with the supplies she’d packed… which, based on what I’d eaten in the cottage so far, would probably be far more tasty than Mr. Bowditch’s sardines. I picked up the long handles and was delighted to find the cart weighed almost nothing, as if it had been made of this world’s version of balsa wood. For all I knew, it was. Also, the wheels were well greased and didn’t squeak, as the wheels of the young couple’s cart had done. I thought pulling it would be hardly more difficult than pulling my little red wagon when I was seven.
I turned it around and walked to the road, ducking under more lines as I went. Radar padded along beside me. When I reached what I was then thinking of as the City Road （there wasn’t a yellow brick in sight, so that name was out）， I turned back. Dora was standing at the side of her cottage with her hands clasped between her breasts. When she saw me looking, she raised them to her mouth and then opened them toward me.
I dropped the handles of the cart long enough to copy her gesture, then set out on my way. Here is something I learned in Empis: good people shine brighter in dark times.
Help her, too, I thought. Help Dora, too.
2
We walked up hill and down dale, as one of those old stories might say. Crickets chirred and birds sang. The poppies on our left occasionally gave way to tilled fields where I saw gray men and women—not a lot—working. They saw me and stopped what they were doing until I went by. I waved, but only one of them, a woman wearing a big straw hat, waved back. There were other fields lying fallow and forgotten. Weeds sprouted among the growing vegetables, along with bright scarves of poppies, which I thought would eventually take over.
On the right, the woods continued. There were a few farmhouses, but most of them were deserted. Twice rabbits as big as small dogs hopped across the path. Radar looked at them with interest, but showed no inclination to chase them, so I unclipped her lead and tossed it in the cart. “Don’t disappoint me, girl.”
After an hour or so I stopped to untie the good-sized bundle of food Dora had packed for me. There were molasses cookies among the other goodies. No chocolate in those, so I gave one to Radar, who snarked it up. There were also three long glass jars wrapped in clean rags. Two were filled with water, and one contained what looked like tea. I drank some water and gave some to Radar in a pottery cup my friend had also packed. She lapped it up eagerly.
As I finished repacking, I saw three people trudging down the road toward me. The two men were just beginning to turn gray, but the woman walking between them was as dark as a summer thundercloud. One of her eyes was pulled up in a slit that stretched all the way to her temple, an awful thing to look at. Except for a single blue gleam of iris like a shard of sapphire, the other was buried in a lump of gray flesh. She was wearing a filthy dress that bulged out in what could only be a late-stage pregnancy. She held a bundle wrapped in a filthy blanket. One of the men was wearing a pair of boots with buckles on the sides—they reminded me of the one I’d seen hanging on a line in Dora’s backyard when I made my first visit. The other man wore sandals. The woman’s feet were bare.
They saw Radar sitting in the road and paused.
“Don’t worry,” I called. “She won’t bite you.”
They came on slowly, then stopped again. It was the holstered gun they were looking at now, so I raised my hands, palms out. They began walking again, but shying way over to the left side of the road, looking at Radar, looking at me, then back to Radar again.