I was digging out on the south wall when I saw Shimmy go by. I guess they call him Shimmy because of the way he walks, sort of a shifty staggering jerky walk that seems like his legs have got too much jump in them and no clear idea where to put it. Shoulders bouncing, neck swaying, old Shimmy can be seen every morning, when the sun's first up and before the heat rises and the stink sinks in, shimmying his way out of town, out into the trashlands.
Most people say Shimmy is crazy. I mostly agree, since being smart is being able to talk, and Shimmy doesn't talk unless you talk to him, and when you do he can't string three words together that make sense. But I don't think he's crazy because he dresses like a party flag, or because he eats from the dirt; I do that, I think we all do, just Shimmy does it in the open and people like to tease him because they can.
And I don't think he's crazy because he goes into the Trashlands; he's old, for one thing, and old means a kind of smart: there must be something to eat out there that only Shimmy knows about, and if so he's smart enough not to talk about it. So a while back I started paying attention to Shimmy, where most people only ignore him, or throw things at him, or swear and call out his name as he shimmys by. I gave up on trying to talk to him a while ago, it seemed to make him unhappy, but I still look for him in the morning and especially in the afternooon. I figured that one day I'll see him go out, and then I won't see him come back, and if no one else notices at least I will, and I'd remember. It would if no one remembered he'd gone out at all.
Once I started watching him, I got to notice that he generally goes out in only two or three different directions; never towards the sun glare in the morning, or straight away from it when he comes back, but mostly sideways the one way or sideways the other way.
I didn't notice it at first that morning, I just kept digging, and thinking about Shimmy, until it occurred to me that this morning, he'd been shimmying straight towards the sunrise. It occurred to me, as I thought about it and dug, that Shimmy might have found something new to see, or to eat, out there in the trashlands, and if so it might not be a bad idea to see what. I'd eaten good the night before, and it had rained two days before that so three of my fours were still full. So after I'd scooped up another two or three worms, I hid my trowel in a trunk I knew how to open, and snuck off after him.
The south wall is big, the biggest part of Our Town. I don't think anyone's ever climbed it, though the boys try and fall off and get hurt all the time. For some reason, it's less foamy at the base, just down outside at its foot, I think maybe it has to do with how the rain runs when it falls. Anyway I usually try to get out that way every two or three days to see what's in the black, especially since I found the nest. The Old Lady used to say I had a real knack for black, God rest. At least it's usually not to hard to find all the worms I need for the day; the trick is to get out there late enough that it's light out, but early enough so none of the Revs catch on to what you're up to, because once they do they'll turn you out and wreck whatever you've got sooner or later.
Shimmy is easy to follow, because he's a pretty noisy walker and, well, he's pretty slow. All that extra energy in his walk, and he seems to be spending most of it getting himself to move in a straight line. The tricky part is that once you're out in the trashlands, it's kind of hard to follow anybody without getting spotted; it's just those long, short hills of foam and heaps and rot, like a low ocean swell Dad used to say, God rest, whatever that means. I could see Shimmy up ahead, walking over the hills into the bright morning sunshine, and I figured it would be best to sort of be down in the bottom of the little valleys when he was walking over the top, and sneak over the tops when he was down in the bottom of his. He didn't usually look around, that I knew of, and I figured if I was low and fast I could sneak along without his seeing me.
We were getting along this way and I was starting to sweat in the sun, and wishing I knew of a trunk somewhere thereabouts I could stow my ragtop in, but we were already pretty far out and everything was starting to look the same. It was going to be a very hot day, I could already feel from the way the air caught the light and just held it, glowing in a big white stink haze like it was made to hold the light like a bottle. It just kept getting hotter and hotter, and Shimmy kept shimmying his way along over those hills. Twice I tripped up and fell; you never really want to look down at where you're stepping in the Trashlands, for obvious reasons, but you also have to look where you're going so you don't trip and wind up with your face in a heap of rot. I tripped, the second time I did exactly that. I caught it and said "don't look at it, you don't want to look at it," but I didn't look at or see the long metal bar poking up at my feet, and I fell sort of sideways and my face went right in it. Some went in my nose. It made me sick. Life is tricky.
So after I was through with my sick, and had sipped from my second fours, I got up and looked over the next hill for Shimmy, but i didn't see him. I waited, and moved quietly away from the mess I'd fallen in, and tried to stop cringing over how sick I'd felt and listen. Nothing.
After a long while of feeling the heat rise off my like a little fire, I crept forward, almost without deciding to, to try and see where Shimmy had gotten. Maybe he'd fallen down and was hurt? No one knew what was in the Trashlands anymore. I moved as quietly as I could.
One hill, two hills. Three hills. I was trying to remember if he'd been four hills ahead of me, or five, or six. Everything still looked the same. I was mostly also looking straight at the ground, and feeling mostly revolted about it, though I was pretty sure that seeing the things in the hills was better than falling down face right into them. I was just looking at something that might have been a chicken once when I came over the fifth hill, or the sixth, and almost tripped right over Shimmy.
"Shimmy!" I said. I almost said There you are! but I didn't want to give myself away. "What are you doing here?" I said after catching myself, but I don't think it was very convincing. I needn't have worried, Shimmy wasn't listening to me. After a moment, I realized I wasn't sure he knew I was there. He was bent over something, shielding it from the sun and squinting at it. At first I thought he'd found something worth digging up, and I swore to myself for leaving my trowel behind, but then I got a look at what he was holding. It had a screen.
I had never seen a screen before, not a working one that actually showed things. There were a hundred thousand blank and busted ones back in Our Town. Old Org, the last Rev Head, had made a second house with walls made out of them tied together. He said there was a magic in it that would protect him, probably from the other Revs when they saw he was getting old and was time to be torn apart. I don't know if it kept them away, but he wasn't torn apart. His roof fell in.
But this screen was different. For one thing it was tiny, smaller than a palm and almost the size of a fingernail. It wasn't glowing, like Dad used to say they did, God rest, but there were definitely little dark shapes on the screen, and they were definitely moving and changing. They looked like little creepers with legs bent and straight and curled in different directions, all marching in need little rows and stopping and marching again. Then I suddenly saw the thing, I mean really saw it, and felt every muscle in me go tense and numb like I'd been digging and bitten into a heavy shock line, because I knew what those little creepers were and what they meant. Shimmy could read.
My Dad, God rest, had been able to read, and he had had a lot of books before the Revs came to Our Town, or so he said. He'd managed to keep one, and after Mom left us he'd been quietly trying to show me how it worked, in the early morning when the Revs were still asleep. It was about this big, as big as my hand, and square and flat, and felt smooth and rough at the same time; like it was made of very flat, very firm rags, but clean and even all the way around. I thought it was wonderful, and was always very careful when he let me hold it. He would open it, and I'd sit in his lap, and he'd run his fingers along under each little line of the little creepers, and he'd tell me a story. It was about a boy who'd been left with a family of gorillas when he was very little, and had grown up with them, and knew all about how to live with the gorillas and in the junble, but didn't know he was really a man. I don't know what a gorilla is, there weren't any pictures. The book never called them gorillas either, that was the word my Dad used for them, God rest. But one morning a Rev came out to piss and saw us sitting, and he took the book, though he'd had to kick me hard and break my Dad's arm to get it. He took it and I never saw it again.
And here was Shimmy, crazy old Shimmy, with a working screen in his party flag pants, and reading in the stinking sun with no one to know it.
Suddenly he seemed to notice I was crouching next to him. He went rigid as I had just done, then sprang on me, and I saw that somewhere he'd gotten a knife. Then he saw it was me, I was too surprised to have said anything yet, and he backed off. He crouched and stared. I felt hot and unhappy. The screen had disappeared.
"You followed me," he said after a minute. No crazy in his eyes now, no sleepy stupid. Just a hard light, a thing that knew and kept very quiet. Old Shimmy.
"You never walk towards the sun," I said after a little while. There was nothing else to say.
He nodded as if thinking hard.
"I know you saw," he said slowly and carefully, like one of the Revs praying. "If I don't kill you, then they'll know."
"Not from me," I said, almost stammering. The knife had a big one, but not too clean looking.
"Too heavy," he said, shaking his head. "It's all too heavy."
I said nothing. I hadn't risen from where he'd knocked me down. He turned away, still crouched in the sun.
"I know you're a good boy," he said after a long while.
There was nothing to say to that, so I said nothing.
"You wouldn't tell them on purpose," he said. "BUt now that you know, I can't trust you to keep quiet forever. They might decide to play with you one night, and then what."
I still didn't say anything. It didn't seem to be a question, and if it was I didn't want to think about the answer.
"This might be the last time, anyway," he said.
Being quiet seemed to be working, so I kept at it dilligently.
"Can you read," he said, still facing away.
I shook my head, then said, "No."
He sighed, as if he was carrying something heavy and had to pick up something else.
"Then we'll go together," he said, and rising he started off again. I watched him climb the hill, get over it, and continue walking without pausing. I realized with another jolt that he was barely shimmying at all now. I got up and followed him.
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