With Martin she had been proud with a tremor like the drug withdrawal now, proud of his love but fearful of losing what she could not deserve. He felt lent; always she had expected his loss to another woman who would not come to him stained. But she lost him to the street.

In this odd moment she recalled him peacefully, her young husband. How he would stare to see her now, used and battered. If he appeared before her, he would seem as young as Jackrabbit. Of all she had lost, he was the sweet one she could least afford to call back from the dead, from the garbage bin where the poor were cast, for she was no longer a mate for him. But once, Once she had held him supple and sinewy and hot in her arms, she had trembled under him, shy and shaken. Long ago. She had loved him well. As she should have loved her daughter.

When Luciente came back, walking lightly on the needles, she greeted her: “I wish we could have Dawn with us.”

Luciente frowned, sitting down. “Afraid to try. Afraid for per … I don’t like to disappoint you.”

“Just a little while. One hour. Half an hour. Who can bother us here in the woods?”

“Ummm. It makes me nervous.”

“We’ll be careful! I want to see her so much. Let her come through to us. Just for a little while.”

Still frowning, Luciente mumbled, “I’ll ask her.”

A few minutes later Dawn stood under the pines wearing blue overalls. Her hair had been cut shorter, her skin was toasted brown, and she wore a neat bandage that looked somehow sealed to the skin of her arm.

“What happened to your arm?” Connie asked her.

“Oh, that!” Dawn held out her arm importantly. “I did that diving.”

“Diving into the river?”

“No, in the bay. My study group went visiting the fish herds. Then we did free diving and I scraped myself.” Dawn stared all around her. “It looks just like a regular woods. I thought there’d be cities and accidents and smokestacks and beggars and pollution!”

“There is a lot of pollution,” Luciente said. “There’s a paved roadway near here with internal combustion engines running on it, and it’s lined with dangerous refuse.”

“How come you wanted me to come?” Dawn asked Connie. “How come you look at me the way you do?”

“I’m silly.” She found herself apologizing. “You remind me of my daughter. She was taken from me.”

“Daughter? What’s that?”

“My child. You look like my child. She was called Angelina”

“Magdalena says I can only stay a few minutes. I can’t go back without seeing something! Mama, isn’t there something to look at?”

“Okay!” Luciente sighed, “We’ll creep, quiet and stealthy as ancient Wamponaugs, over to the highway and I’ll show you a real autocar.”

“Really!” Dawn hugged herself. “That’s running good! I can’t wait! They’re fasure dangerous, aren’t they! I mean, they killed millions of people!”

“But quietly,” Luciente cautioned.

Dawn babbled with excitement. “I studied about them. I saw them on holi. How the whole society was built around them, they paved over the earth for them to run on and sit on right in the middle of where they lived! Everyone had to have one. And they all set out in their private autocar to go someplace at the same time and got stuck in jams and breathed poison and got sick. Yet people loved their autocars like family. They drove fast in them till they wore out and ran into each other and got broken and burned and mangled and still they would rather drive in their autocars than do anything! Now can I see one?”

“But it felt good to ride in them,” she said to the child, not daring to touch her. Small brown arm with the bandage where she must have hurt her tender flesh. “You could get into a car and go riding in the country anytime you wanted.”

“But there were so many of you. How could you go riding at the same time without running into each other?”

Martin’s golden Mustang. “Sometimes when you’re young, oh, just riding in a car, a convertible maybe with the top down and the radio turned on, a song with a beat … You feel on top of the world. You feel so … alive, so beautiful!”

Mother and child surveyed her blankly. “Often we feel good,” Luciente protested, “but it usually has to do with work, as when I found the bug in our experiment. Or when we’re together in the fooder talking and in the morning telling dreams. Or after the critting session with Bolivar, when you feel others love and care and we live connected and must struggle to do better together. When Bee was with you, you were pleased. What does that have to do with objects?”

They wriggled through the bushes close enough to the highway so that Dawn could peer out. “Ooooh!” she said when a truck thundered past. “It stinks!”

“Shh.” Luciente dropped a warning hand on her finely turned shoulder.

“How could they hear us, making so much noise?” But Dawn whispered.

“See, there’s a car,” Connie said. “The red one. It’s a Chevy Vega.”

“How come person inside has the windows all the way up when it’s so hot? Is person scared of something?” Dawn asked.

“He probably has the air conditioning on–a machine that makes it cool,” Connie said, studying Dawn’s hair and ears.

“Only one person in that whole machine! So much energy spent! The sadness of it, the loneliness!” Luciente blew her nose.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” Dawn said, kissing her cheek. “Why sadden? It just seems stupid.”

“All those people in metal boxes, alone and cut off!” Luciente shook her head. “How could you start to talk? Make friends? Once when I was returning from visiting my childhood family, I took ill suddenly. My fever rose and I felt dreadful. A person helped me lower my fever and the dipper rerouted to a hospital for me … . Traveling I always meet people I exchange pleasure with–a meal, a conversation, a coupling, interseeing, a making of music, drumming to their slide playing … . Locked in a metal box, how I could make contact? The accidents they had were bumping of metal on flesh. Our accidents are bumping of flesh against flesh, the brushing of lives–”

“Shhh!” Connie thrust herself flat. A police car went by at less than usual speed. Sinister in its lazy patrol. She cringed against the ground, clammy with fear. When it had gone, she began to crawl back from the highway. “Let’s get out of here.”

When they reached her tree, Luciente had already sent Dawn back. Luciente took her hand then and held it. “Dawn is too young to comprend why you love per. But welove you back.”

Connie wanted to speak of the night with Bee, but could not. She looked down, sorry she could not say her feelings. “I … I,” was all she could stammer. “I … pues … I want you to know …”

Luciente beamed. “I found water and also rumcherries and blackberries. The water is unclean. Has residues of lead, cadmium, copper, and strontium ninety. But the water you drank in your space was also unclean. The bacteria content of this water is little higher than that. Will you drink it?”

“Sure.” She gathered up her shoes and smock and followed Luciente. The water oozed from the earth perhaps half a mile farther on, near the edge of the patch of woods. It was dark brown and she feared it, but her mouth was sore and dry, her throat burned again. They put a beer bottle and a jar in the small stream to soak as clean as they could, so that after she had drunk her fill, slowly as Luciente warned her, she could carry away water.

Blackberries grew in great arching brambles at the wood’s far edge. Only some were ripe and fell into her hand with their fat juicy weight when she touched them. They were sweet and winy in her mouth. After she had eaten and drunk and picked more for later, Luciente pointed out bouncing Bet to her, pretty pale pink flowers that looked as if they might have escaped from a garden. “Use the leaves for soap.”

“I have real soap.” She rescued the scrap from the pocket of the denim jacket and finally cleaned herself slowly but thoroughly in the brown water of the spring.