Bram Wolfe's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Bram Wolfe kept his left hand in his pocket because the missing two fingers were on every poster in Zeroline. He stood in the ration line under the low brick arches, third from the front, and watched a boy point at him and then look away fast. Two weeks ago Bram had smashed a ration machine with a pipe wrench. The regime had printed his face. Now strangers pressed bread into his coat and called him a hero, and any one of them could sell him for a month of coupons. He wanted the whole city to riot with him. He had no way to say so without hanging himself. The line moved. Bram took his tin, half the weight it should have been, and stepped aside. That was when he saw the painter working the far wall. Joss Birke was the man who had covered these tunnels in smiling farmers and grateful mothers years ago. Bram had passed those murals a thousand times. Tonight Joss stood on a short ladder with a narrow brush, and he was painting a thin black line straight through a painted woman's smile. He worked quickly, glancing at the guards, then adding another stroke to the next face, and the next. Bram walked over slow. He set his flask on the ladder's bottom rung so Joss would have to look down. "You'll get shot," Bram said. "They don't look up," Joss said. His voice was soft, almost apologetic. He did not stop painting. "They look at hands and papers." "How long have you been doing this?" "Six months. Nobody's noticed." Joss finally glanced down. His eyes caught on Bram's pocketed hand, then on his face. He didn't flinch. He dipped the brush again. "I know who you are." Bram's stomach dropped. He measured the distance to the stairs. "Easy," Joss said. "If I wanted the coupons I'd have taken them." He climbed down one rung. "You broke a machine. People talk about it in the queue. Quiet. But they talk." "Talk isn't enough." "No." Joss wiped the brush on his coat, adding another smear to a hundred others. "But a mark is. One line, one wall. Anyone can copy it. Nobody has to say your name." Bram looked down the tunnel. Six murals. Six black strikes through six painted mouths. Simple enough for a child to draw with a bit of coal. "A sign," Bram said. "A sign," Joss said. "You give them the sign. I'll give you the walls." Bram took the brush from Joss's hand. He climbed the ladder. He drew one black line across the next smiling face, slow, so his shortened hand would remember the shape. When he climbed down, two women in the queue were watching. Neither spoke. One of them nodded once, and turned back to the line. Bram gave the brush back. He had his method now. He also had a witness he could not undo.