Chapter 19 #3
"They got one unit running in the first winter on manual governor control and they've had it running since." Wingman's breath was bad and he had to stop. "And that's the truth and I want it said clear, because everything I'm going to say after this makes it sound like a lie."
"Go on."
"There's a doctor. There's a real one, she's about sixty and she was an internist in Spokane and she is as good as anybody left alive. There's penicillin,
because there's a woman growing it in trays in a basement with power and a refrigerator and she's got a culture that works about one batch in four."
"That's not nothing."
"That's not nothing. That's the only antibiotic between here and the Pacific and I have watched it save eleven people."
"Then why did nine people walk nine hundred miles away from it?"
Wingman was quiet for a while.
"Because of the list," he said.
"What list?"
"There's a man named Alder who runs the intake." The old man's mouth was flat. "He's about fifty and he's got a clipboard and a truck and four men, and he goes out and he counts a settlement for two days from a ridge before he ever comes down."
"You told us that. In the bark."
"I told you that because it's the thing I recognized." Wingman's grey eyes came around. "Thorn, I sat in a rockpile above your bench in September and counted your family for two days before I ever raked your dog. I know exactly what he is because he's what I was, except he's got fuel."
"And what does he do with the count?"
"He writes down how many can work." Wingman's voice went flatter. "And then he comes down and he offers the whole settlement a place, and it's a real place, and there's really a doctor and there's really a school."
"And?"
"And the ones who can't work don't go."
Tom sat very still.
"Say it plainly."
"They take everybody under forty who can lift. They take the seed and half the food. They take the guns."
Wingman's jaw worked. "And they leave the old and the sick and the ones with something wrong with them, in a place that has just handed over half its food and all its seed and every person who could farm it."
"That's."
"That's not murder," Wingman said. "That's the thing. That is the entire genius of it. Nobody shoots anybody. Nobody makes anybody do anything. Every single person walks onto that truck because they want to, and the ones left behind wave."
"And how many are left behind?"
"In the four I saw? Between four and eleven each."
Nobody at that fence said anything.
"And what happens to them?"
"I don't know," Wingman said, "and neither does anybody at that dam, and that is the point. There is nobody at Grand Coulee who has ever seen what a settlement looks like in March after Alder's been. They send a truck. The truck comes back.
Everybody on it is fed and grateful and nobody lies to anybody."
Loreen Tack, who had been standing behind Tom for four hours and had not sat down once, said, "How do you know?"
"Because I went back," Wingman said.
"To where?"
"To one of them. In May, two years ago. Place called Wilbur, about forty miles east of the dam." His voice had gone to almost nothing. "They'd taken twenty six people out of it in the previous September and left nine. I walked in there in May and there were two."
"Two."
"A woman of about seventy and a boy who was maybe fourteen and wasn't right, and they'd eaten the seed in February and they were living on cattails."
"What did you do?"
Wallace Wingman looked straight up at the sky.
"I sat down with them for eleven days," he said, "and then I walked back to the dam and I found Dorothy and I told her, and about four months later there were nine of us going east."
Dorothy Yeoh said, "That's most of it but not all of it."
"Dorothy."
"He can't tell this part, so I will." She came and stood at the fence. "My son was on the list. Fifteen. They were going to take him out on the September truck to a place called Almira and I was on the list too, and my mother wasn't, because she's sixty six and she's got a bad hip."
"And?"
"And I'd said yes," Dorothy said. "I want everybody here to know that. I said yes in July and I meant it and I'd have got on that truck in September and left my mother in a house with nine people and no seed, and I'd have told myself she'd be fine."
"What changed?"
"He came and found me in August and told me about Wilbur, and I called him a liar." Her jaw was set. "And he said, all right, and he gave me a name and a place and he said go and look, and I went, and it took me eleven days, and there were two people."
"And your mother?"
Dorothy Yeoh pointed down the road at a small grey woman sitting on the gravel drinking broth out of a cup.
"She's had a bad hip for nine hundred miles," she said.
Tom got up off the ground at seven in the evening and walked forty feet away and stood by himself for eleven minutes, and nobody followed him.
Then he came back.
"I'm going to tell you what happens next," he said, "and then the council's going to argue about all of it for a week and probably change half of it."
"Go ahead," Dorothy said.
"Tonight, nine of you sleep on this side of the fence in shelters we put up this afternoon, and eleven of us sleep on the other side, and there'll be somebody awake all night on both sides and everybody knows it and nobody pretends otherwise."
"That's fair."
"Tomorrow the rest of this camp comes back from four miles south and there'll be thirty eight of us and nine of you and it's going to be loud and frightening and I'd rather warn you."
"Thirty eight," Dorothy said.
"Thirty eight, and twenty two of them are under twenty."
She put her hand over her mouth.
"And the day after that," Tom said, "we start talking about the dam, properly, with everybody, and it's going to take a month and it's going to be the hardest month this camp has had in nine years."
"Why?"
"Because we've spent ten years building for people who walk," Tom said, "and you've just told me there's a man four hundred miles west with fuel and a clipboard."
Then he looked down at the litter.
"And you," he said.
"Me."
"You're the other half of it and I'm not going to do that part in front of nine strangers and three children on a road."
"Fair."
"There's thirty eight people in this valley and four of them buried somebody you killed," Tom said, "and one of them is going to be standing in front of you tomorrow morning and his name is Cass Tunny."
Wallace Wingman's face did something for the first time all day.
"He lived," he said.
"He lived, and he's twenty five, and he's got a wife and a daughter, and he has run the road east for six years and he is the reason there are twenty six rock piles between here and the Clark Fork."
The old man on the litter closed his eyes and did not open them for a while.
"Then it worked," he said.
"Don't," Tom said.
"Thorn."
"No. Not tonight. You do not get to lie on a road and tell me it worked, because I have had ten years of your handwriting on rocks and I still cannot tell you whether you were saving people or sorting them, and neither can anybody else in this valley,
and tomorrow thirty eight people are going to have to look at you and decide."
"That's right."
"You agree?"
"Of course I agree," Wingman said. "What do you think I've been doing for fifteen months on a litter?"
Nell came back at nine o'clock that night with a lamp.
Tom saw her go and did not follow her and did not tell Kindra, and Kindra found out at about four the next morning and did not say anything either.
Nell sat down on the ground four feet from the litter.