One thing, though, that maybe changed everything. It was when Marshall said, “I think I’d better play Washington the next time we do Glory of America. You know how to do Toolie’s parts, don’t you, Ollie? As long as Deaver’s with us, he can run lights and you can fill a spot on stage. Let Papa go home and retire.”

  Deaver couldn’t hear what Ollie said.

  “There’s no rush to decide these things,” said Marshall. “But if you do decide to join the outriders, I don’t think you need to use Deaver’s right to apply. I think I could write a letter to Royal that would get you a fair chance.”

  Again, Ollie’s answer was too quiet to hear.

  “I just don’t think it’s right to take away one of Deaver’s choices if we don’t have to. It’s about time I wrote to Royal anyway.”

  This time it was Scarlett who answered, so Deaver could hear just fine. “You can write to Royal all you like Marsh, but the only way Parley and Donna can retire is if Ollie comes on stage, and the only way he can do that is if Deaver runs the lights and sound.”

  “Well, sometime before we get to Moab, I’ll ask Deaver if he’d like to stay,” said Marshall. “Since he can probably hear us talking right now, that’ll give him plenty of time to decide on his answer.”

  Deaver smiled and shook his head. Of course they knew he was listening—these show people always know when there’s an audience. Right at the moment Deaver figured he’d probably say yes. Sure, it’d be sticky for a while with Ollie, partly because of beating him up tonight, but mostly because Ollie had some bad habits with local girls and he wasn’t going to cure them overnight. Ollie still might end up needing to get away and join the outriders. Deaver could teach him to ride, just in case. And if Ollie left, then Dusty’d have to move up to doing some more grown-up parts. It wouldn’t be long till his voice changed, judging from the height he was getting.

  Or things might not work out between Deaver and Katie, in which case it was a good thing the right to apply was good for a year. All kinds of things might change. But it’d all work out. The most important change was the one Marshall made tonight, to take some of the old-man parts and give the leads to Toolie. It meant real change in the way the company ran, and changes like that wouldn’t be undone no matter what else happened. No way to guess the future, but it was a sure thing the past would never come back again.

  After a while things quieted down and Deaver stripped down to his underwear and crawled inside his bedroll. He tried closing his eyes, but that didn’t take him any closer to sleep, so he opened them again and looked at the stars. That was when he heard footsteps coming around the front of the truck. He could tell without looking that it was Katie. She came on over to where Deaver was lying, his bedroll spread out on the pyramid curtain.

  “Are you all right, Deaver?” Katie asked.

  “Softest bed I’ve slept on in a year,” he said.

  “I meant—Ollie was walking kind of doubled over, and it looked like he hurt his hand a little. I wondered if you were OK.”

  “He just fell a couple of times.”

  She looked at him steady for a while. “All right, I guess if you wanted to tell what really happened, you would.”

  “Guess so.”

  Still she stood there, not going away, not saying anything.

  “What’s the show tomorrow?” he asked.

  “The Book of Mormon one,” she said. “No decent parts for women. I spend half my time in drag.” She laughed lightly, but Deaver thought she sounded tired, The moonlight was shining full on her face. She looked a little tired, too, eyes heavy-lidded, her hair straggling beside her face. Kind of soft-looking, that’s how she was in the moonlight. He remembered being angry at her tonight. He remembered kissing her. Both memories were a little embarrassing now.

  “Sorry I got so mad at you tonight,” said Deaver.

  “I should only have people mad at me for that reason—because they liked my show better than I did.”

  “I’m sorry, anyway.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe pageants really are important. Maybe I just get tired of doing them over and over again. I think it’s time we took a vacation, did a real play. We could get town people somewhere to take parts in the play. Maybe they’d like us better if they were part of a show.”

  “Sure.” Deaver was tired, and it all sounded fine to him.

  “Are you staying with us, Deaver?” she asked.

  “I haven’t been asked.”

  “But if Daddy asks you.”

  “I think maybe.”

  “Will you miss it? Riding the range?”

  He chuckled. “No ma’am.” But he knew that if the question was a little different, if she’d asked, Will you miss your dream of riding out on the prairie with Royal Aal, then the answer would’ve been yes, I miss it already.

  But I’ve got a new dream now, or maybe just the return of an old dream, a dream I gave up on years ago, and the hope of joining the outriders, that was just a substitute, just a make-do. So let’s just see, let’s find out over the next few weeks and months and maybe years just how much room there is in this family for one more person. Because I’m not signing on for a pageant wagon. I’m not signing on to be a hireling. I’m signing on to be a family, and if I find out there’s no place for me after all, then I’ll have to go searching for another dream altogether.

  He thought all that, but he didn’t say anything about it. He’d already said too much tonight. No reason to risk getting in more trouble.

  “Deaver,” she whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  “Nope.”

  “I really do like you, and it wasn’t all an act.”

  That was pretty much an apology, and he accepted it. “Thanks, Katie. I believe you.” He closed his eyes.

  He heard a rustle of cloth, a slight movement of the truck as more of her weight leaned against it. She was going to kiss him, he knew it, and he waited for the brush of her lips against his. But it didn’t come. Again the truck moved slightly and she was gone. He heard her feet moving across the dewy grass toward the tents.

  The sky was clear and the night was cool. The moon was high now, as near to straight up as it was going to get. Tomorrow it might well rain—it had been four days since the last storm, and that was about as long as you got around here. So tomorrow there might be a storm, which meant tying little tents over all the lights, and if it got bad enough, putting off the show till the next night. Or canceling and moving on. It felt a little strange, thinking how he was now caught up in a new rhythm—tied to the weather, tied to the shows, and which towns had seen which ones within the last year, but above all tied to these people, their wishes and customs and habits and whims. It was kind of scary, too, that he’d be following along, not always doing things his own way.

  But why should he be scared? There was going to be change anyway, no matter what. With Bette dead, even if he stayed with the range riders there’d be a new horse to get used to. And if he’d applied to the outriders, that’d all be new. So it wasn’t as though his life wasn’t going to get turned upside down anyway.

  Sleep came sooner than he thought it would. He dreamed, a deep hard dream that seemed like the most important thing in his life. In his dream he remembered something he hadn’t been able to think of in his whole life: what his real name was, the name his own parents gave him, back before the mobbers killed them. In his dream he saw his mother’s face, and heard his father’s voice. But as he woke in the morning, the dream fading, he tried to think of that voice, and all he could hear inside his head was an echo of his own voice; and the face of his mother faded into Katie’s face. And when he shaped his true name with silent lips, he knew that it wasn’t true anymore. It was the name of a little boy who got lost somewhere and was never found again. Instead he murmured the name he had spent his life earning. “Deaver Teague.”

  He smiled a little at the sound of it. It wasn’t a bad name at all, and he kind of liked imagining what it could mean someday.

  Special thanks to Tor for giving permission for IGMS to reprint The Folk of the Fringe which is still in print.

  2010

  America

  Sam Monson and Anamari Boagente had two encounters in their lives, forty years apart. The first encounter lasted for several weeks in the high Amazon jungle, the village of Agualinda. The second was for only an hour near the ruins of the Glen Canyon Dam, on the border between Navaho country and the State of Deseret.

  When they met the first time, Sam was a scrawny teenager from Utah and Anamari was a middle-aged spinster Indian from Brazil. When they met the second time, he was governor of Deseret, the last European state in America, and she was, to some people’s way of thinking, the mother of God. It never occurred to anyone that they had ever met before, except me. I saw it plain as day, and pestered Sam until he told me the whole story. Now Sam is dead, and she’s long gone, and I’m the only one who knows the truth. I thought for a long time that I’d take this story untold to my grave, but I see now that I can’t do that. The way I see it, I won’t be allowed to die until I write this down. All my real work was done long since, so why else am I alive? I figure the land has kept me breathing so I can tell the story of its victory, and it has kept you alive so you can hear it. Gods are like that. It isn’t enough for them to run everything. They want to be famous, too.

  AGUALINDA, AMAZONAS

  Passengers were nothing to her. Anamari only cared about helicopters when they brought medical supplies. This chopper carried a precious packet of benaxidene; Anamari barely noticed the skinny, awkward boy who sat by the crates, looking hostile. Another Yanqui who doesn’t want to be stuck out in the jungle. Nothing new about that. Norteamericanos were almost invisible to Anamari by now. They came and went.

  It was the Brazilian government people she had to worry about, the petty bureaucrats suffering through years of virtual exile in Manaus, working out their frustrations by being petty tyrants over the helpless Indians. No I’m sorry we don’t have any more penicillin, no more syringes, what did you do with the AIDS vaccine we gave you three years ago? Do you think we’re made of money here? Let them come to town if they want to get well. There’s a hospital in São Paulo de Olivenca, send them there, we’re not going to turn you into a second hospital out there in the middle of nowhere, not for a village of a hundred filthy Baniwas, it’s not as if you’re a doctor, you’re just an old withered-up Indian woman yourself, you never graduated from the medical schools, we can’t spare medicines for you. It made them feel so important, to decide whether or not an Indian child would live or die. As often as not they passed sentence of death by refusing to send supplies. It made them feel powerful as God.

  Anamari knew better than to protest or argue—it would only make that bureaucrat likelier to kill again in the future. But sometimes, when the need was great and the medicine was common, Anamari would go to the Yanqui geologists and ask if they had this or that. Sometimes they did. What she knew about Yanquis was that if they had some extra, they would share, but if they didn’t, they wouldn’t lift a finger to get any. They were not tyrants like Brazilian bureaucrats. They just didn’t give a damn. They were there to make money.

  That was what Anamari saw when she looked at the sullen light-haired boy in the helicopter—another Norteamericano, just like all the other Norteamericanos, only younger.

  She had the benaxidene, and so she immediately began spreading word that all the Baniwas should come for injections. It was a disease introduced during the war between Guyana and Venezuela two years ago; as usual, most of the victims were not citizens of either country, just the Indios of the jungle, waking up one morning with their joints stiffening, hardening until no movement was possible. Benaxidene was the antidote, but you had to have it every few months or your joints would stiffen up again. As usual, the bureaucrats had diverted a shipment and there were a dozen Baniwas bedridden in the village. As usual, one or two of the Indians would be too far gone for the cure; one or two of their joints would be stiff for the rest of their lives. As usual, Anamari said little as she gave the injections, and the Baniwas said less to her.

  It was not until the next day that Anamari had time to notice the young Yanqui boy wandering around the village. He was wearing rumpled white clothing, already somewhat soiled with the greens and browns of life along the rivers of the Amazon jungle. He showed no sign of being interested in anything, but an hour into her rounds, checking on the results of yesterday’s benaxidene treatments, she became aware that he was following her.

  She turned around in the doorway of the government-built hovel and faced him. “O que?” she demanded. What do you want?

  To her surprise, he answered in halting Portuguese. Most of these Yanquis never bothered to learn the language at all, expecting her and everybody else to speak English. “Posso adujar?” he asked. Can I help?

  “Nao,” she said. “Mas pode olhar.” You can watch.

  He looked at her in bafflement.

  She repeated her sentence slowly, enunciating clearly. “Pode olhar.”

  “Eu?” Me?

  “Voce, sim. And I can speak English.”

  “I don’t want to speak English.”

  “Tanto faz,” she said. Makes no difference.

  He followed her into the hut. It was a little girl, lying naked in her own feces. She had palsy from a bout with meningitis years ago, when she was an infant, and Anamari figured that the girl would probably be one of the ones for whom the benaxidene came too late. That’s how things usually worked—the weak suffer most. But no, her joints were flexing again, and the girl smiled at them, that heartbreakingly happy smile that made palsy victims so beautiful at times.

  So. Some luck after all, the benaxidene had been in time for her. Anamari took the lid off the clay waterjar that stood on the one table in the room, and dipped one of her clean rags in it. She used it to wipe the girl, then lifted her frail, atrophied body and pulled the soiled sheet out from under her. On impulse, she handed the sheet to the boy.

  “Leva fora,” she said. And, when he didn’t understand, “Take it outside.”

  He did not hesitate to take it, which surprised her. “Do you want me to wash it?”

  “You could shake off the worst of it,” she said. “Out over the garden in back. I’ll wash it later.”

  He came back in, carrying the wadded-up sheet, just as she was leaving. “All done here,” she said. “We’ll stop by my house to start that soaking. I’ll carry it now.”

  He didn’t hand it to her. “I’ve got it,” he said. “Aren’t you going to give her a clean sheet?”

  “There are only four sheets in the village,” she said. “Two of them are in my bed. She won’t mind lying on the mat. I’m the only one in the village who cares about linens. I’m also the only one who cares about this girl.”

  “She likes you,” he said.

  “She smiles like that at everybody.”

  “So maybe she likes everybody.”

  Anamari grunted and led the way to her house. It was two government hovels pushed together. The one served as her clinic, the other as her home. Out back she had two metal washtubs. She handed one of them to the Yanqui boy, pointed at the rainwater tank, and told him to fill it. He did. It made her furious.

  “What do you want!” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Why do you keep hanging around?”

  “I thought I was helping.” His voice was full of injured pride.

  “I don’t need your help.” She forgot that she had meant to leave the sheet to soak. She began rubbing it on the washboard.

  “Then why did you ask me to . . .”

  She did not answer him, and he did not complete the question.

  After a long time he said, “You were trying to get rid of me, weren’t you?”

  “What do you want here?” she said. “Don’t I have enough to do, without a Norteamericano boy to look after?”

  Anger flashed in his eyes, but he did not answer until the anger was gone. “If you’re tired of scrubbing, I can take over.”

  She reached out and took his hand, examined it for a moment. “Soft hands,” she said. “Lady hands. You’d scrape your knuckles on the washboard and bleed all over the sheet.”

  Ashamed, he put his hands in his pockets. A parrot flew past him, dazzling green and red; he turned in surprise to look at it. It landed on the rainwater tank. “Those sell for a thousand dollars in the States,” he said.

  Of course the Yanqui boy evaluates everything by price. “Here they’re free,” she said. “The Baniwa eat them. And wear the feathers.”

  He looked around at the other huts, the scraggly gardens. “The people are very poor here,” he said. “The jungle life must be hard.”

  “Do you think so?” she snapped. “The jungle is very kind to these people. It has plenty for them to eat, all year. The Indians of the Amazon did not know they were poor until Europeans came and made them buy pants, which they couldn’t afford, and build houses, which they couldn’t keep up, and plant gardens. Plant gardens! In the midst of this magnificent Eden. The jungle life was good. The Europeans made them poor.”

  “Europeans?” asked the boy.

  “Brazilians. They’re all Europeans. Even the black ones have turned European. Brazil is just another European country, speaking a European language. Just like you Norteamericanos. You’re Europeans too.”

  “I was born in America,” he said. “So were my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.”

  “But your bis-bis-avos, they came on a boat.”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said.

  “A long time!” She laughed. “I am a pure Indian. For ten thousand generations I belong to this land. You are a stranger here. A fourth-generation stranger.”

  “But I’m a stranger who isn’t afraid to touch a dirty sheet,” he said. He was grinning defiantly.