Out the Window

So much has changed.

So many people sleep outside now, on the tracts of land that used to be pastures, on the road I used to take to school. Now, beyond just a single hill, but also on the hill beyond that one, where there once were trees, and on the hill beyond that one, also barren, are endless camps.

But the camps aren’t as noticeable as the worshippers. Worshippers on rolling hills, as far as the eye can see. They arrange themselves in groups based on the color of the robes they wear, but I don’t know why. They’re bowing again. Deep, sequential bows. A thin metallic plunk of a gong, which could easily just be a trash can lid struck with a log, and then a wave will overtake a hill. And then the hill beyond that one. And then the hill beyond that one.

My phone no longer works. I was once so proud of this phone. I could use it to call for a ride just for me. for food, any type I wanted. I could look at high definition pictures of anyone in the world, search for videos of nearly any unspeakable, violent or salacious thing. And it would be there, right when I wanted it. This was not that long ago. But it was quite a while, all things considered.

At my camp, it’s loud, it’s smoky from the fires every 50 yards or so, and people are watching TV together, eating snacks, and chattering. Some are people I knew before the camps. Some of them know of me, second or third-hand, so I don’t speak up in the chatter. One or two who do know me, who in a past life may have even liked me, never turn to look at me. They’re always waiting for the others to realize. The inevitable moment when someone says, “wait, are you…” and a soldier comes for me. So I listen to their chatter, and I try not to attract any attention to myself.

There’s Diane. She’s popular in my camp. Long ago, when the phones all did what we wanted as soon as we wanted, Diane became an influencer, and a strong force in rejecting the worshippers. But she had a way of making everyone who didn’t agree with her into a worshipper. She mostly used her influence for good, it seemed. She got a man arrested who had hurt his ex wife, and fashioned herself a champion for everyone who was oppressed. But one day, she turned that influence on me. Her popularity was greater than my own. It cost me my job, my wife, my house. Now I sleep outside. I can overhear her, but I keep my head down and don’t chime in.

“HERO is a joke,” she proclaimed. “The leader of that org, Al, makes all kinds of money, but I got a look at their books. And only 5% of his time is accounted for! The other 95% of his time just comes from where? From what? I’ll never give HERO a dime,” she says. “You just don’t know who is pulling the strings over there.” This is one of the ways she gets her influence – she’s vague. She doesn’t really have direct knowledge, she’ll tell you, just suspicions. And at a time when so many of us are being pushed outdoors and into the camps, suspicion is comforting, it keeps us a different kind of warm than all the campfires.

Her proclamation about Al’s salary bothers me. I used to be an accountant at HERO. What Diane is describing is either her own ignorance, or at best, willfully misreading the HERO financial situation. I wonder to myself if, in some perfect world, I could speak up without revealing who I am, and explain the cash accrual basis upon which Al’s rather meager salary is calculated based on project budgets. As I formulate a sentence or two in my head, it quickly becomes apparent I couldn’t accomplish this mission without foolishly revealing myself. It’s all above board at HERO, as far as I know, but to someone like Diane, it’s just more confirmation of corruption by the worshippers.

Al, whose camp isn’t far away, walks by. Diane stops speaking and squints when she sees him, and others who were listening to her suspicions turn in unison and squint at Al, following him closely. He’s affable, always smiling, and nowadays he does look like he’s doing well. But honestly, when everyone else is doing poorly, just maintaining your place looks like getting ahead. He doesn’t wear the tell-tale robes of the worshippers, and when he speaks in public it’s almost always against the worshippers explicitly.

Al is handing out quarter sheet flyers. “Meet others concerned about the safety of our camps” is written at the bottom of the flyer. There’s a location, a regular recurring time. Most people notice the words at the top first. An older man with a prosthetic leg takes a flyer and notices the large text of the invitation: “free meals and hope.”

“What kind of free meals?,” the old man asks.

Al smiles back. “Funny, nobody ever asks about the hope.”

The old man, barely smiling, retorts, “Oh, because I know that part’s just bullshit you use to fill seats.”

Al explains HERO to the old man. I’m going to miss my date if I don’t leave now. Plus if Al sees me, he might recognize me, and then the suspicions will turn back toward me. Better they focus on Al than I have to move camps again. I walk to the bus stop.

The buses are crowded. They used to be so empty, but now they’re packed to the brim, and people ride clinging to the outsides and crammed up against the walls inside. I’m lucky enough to get to lean indoors instead of holding on for dear life as the bus careens down dusty, broken roads. It’s a hot, sunny day, like most. I look out the hole where a window used to be. I see a familiar sight. A soldier holding a submachine gun.

I don’t know if it’s a soldier. He’s young. He could be a mercenary – the two are usually identical. It’s so unlikely he’s one of the insurgents, the radicals, that the thought doesn’t even cross my mind – most of those were smoked out and killed, or exiled, long ago. He isn’t police – he doesn’t have the armor and they’re rarely alone. He may just be a random guy with a gun, but nowadays most of them have chosen a side, and their clothes make it that much more obvious.

I don’t know if it’s an Uzi or a Sten. I’ve learned a lot about guns this year, but identifying them on sight is tricky. It’s compact, unlike the larger assault rifles. It has an extended clip – a banana clip, maybe – and the kind of shoulder strap I’ve seen on an Uzi. But I might be confusing the Uzi with the Bren. Or is it Sten? I’ve gotten myself mixed up. The bus keeps going, it disappears out of view, with the man carrying it.

Then the bus stops pretty suddenly, and leans heavily to one side. “What the fuck,” the driver yells at nobody. A young boy falls off the side of the bus due to the sudden stop. Nobody inside really pays attention to him, as the driver is yelling. “Axel’s broken,” he says. “End of the line.” I and a few dozen others barely register our discontent with words as we hang our heads and get off the rickety bus. I glance at a young boy with a broken arm, and then look at the front of the bus, leaning its front end into a massive pothole in poorly-maintained asphalt. I think about what a shame it is, and look to a ditch nearby where this husk of a bus will likely end up a permanent feature of the landscape, next to a faded blue sedan that met a similar fate years ago.

I’m on my way to meet Cheyenne. She and I used to have something between us. It wasn’t quite a romance. It was lustful. She found out I’m single, and asked me to come meet her. Her camp is pretty far away by bus, further still because I have a couple of packages to deliver nearby, so I’ve got to balance them on my hip while I wait. I wait for another bus, a car, anything. There are few, but eventually a giant green car comes barreling down the road I used to take to school. It’s got that classic car feel – long proportions, round headlights, and a canvass top.

Unfinished

A car packed with people where I have to sit in the middle

The packages strewn on harmonsburg road

White buildings – new because they weren’t there before but somehow ancient. Old. Weathered like they’ve been there a century or more. Gaps in the walls, but totally dark inside beyond the gaps.

Cheyenne wants me again, and invites me over. She’s supposed to help me go pick up the packages. Have me for dinner. But right now just has me.

She asks me questions about my mother. “Of course she is a piece of shit she stole a job.” Referencing something I told her Over pillow talk – my mother pretended to work somewhere that offered a disability benefit, so when she was disabled she wouldn’t starve.

Cheyenne leaves me after we fuck. She likely works for the soldiers now

I buy a nice piece of fabric that matches the worshippers. I stand by a fire admiring it. A stranger tells me I look excellent, that it was smart how I pulled it into a robe so quickly, that with a few simple fixes it could be an even better one. He will show me how after this round of worship. I think about how deeply I will bow when we bow. The wave of deep bows comes to me.