A Gift Upon the Shore (10 page)

She said, “Harry, you look terrible. When did you last sleep?” And he did look like a specter, pale and hollow-eyed.

But he called up a smile. “You don't look so good yourself, Mary.”

She laughed, brushed at her hair with her fingers. “No, I don't suppose I do. It's been a long night.”

“Yeah. Damn long. The Rovers split up last night. Hit ten different places.” He looked around at the bullet holes in the walls, the bodies on the grass, the black shell of Jim's van. “Is Rachel okay?”

“She has a very sore arm. Got grazed by a bullet, but I patched it up. And she lost three of her dearest friends. Did you get my message about Jim and Connie?”

A flicker of pain accompanied his nod. “We went to their house a couple of hours ago. Hell, I never thought . . .” He didn't try to finish that. “Do you know about any next of kin for us to notify?”

“No. I think they had some distant relatives in California. They didn't have any children.”

He stared at the van, then frowned. “You said Rachel lost
three
friends?”

“Topaz.” Mary looked toward the mound of earth near the beach path. “One of the bastards kicked her to death.”

“Oh, damn. I know how she feels about her dogs. But maybe I have—” He stopped, distracted. Rachel was coming out the back door.

Mary studied her as she approached, wondering what lay behind her encompassing calm. When she reached them, she had a smile for Harry. “Good morning, Captain.”

“Morning, Ms. Morrow. I'm sorry for what you've been through here. If it's any comfort, I think we took care of most of the gang that was hanging out around Shiloh.”

She nodded. “I hope you didn't lose any of your officers.”

The muscles of his jaw tensed. “Two. Five hurt. Anyway, I radioed for a tow truck and a wagon to clear out this mess here. It'll take a while, but they'll be around.”

“Connie and Jim? Did you—”

“Yes, we took care of that. Mary told me about your dog, and I've got something in the patrol—just a minute.” And he set off for his car, with Rachel and Mary, nonplussed, in his wake. He opened a back door, leaned inside, and emerged with Sparky in his arms. The dog was dull-eyed, atypically quiet, his right front leg bandaged.

Rachel's breath caught, she reached out with a shaking hand to touch Sparky's head as Harry explained, “Some folks down on North Front found him this morning and took him to the clinic. Had a bullet in his leg, but Joanie says he'll be fine. Little doped up now. Anyway, I figured I'd better find a good home for him.”

“You've found it, you know that,” Rachel said huskily. “Come on, Sparky. . . .” And Harry gently transferred the dog into her arms, while Sparky whined and tried to lick her face.

“Well, I'd better get going.” Harry looked around again at the evidence of carnage and shook his head. “My hitch is up in September, and I don't think I'll sign up again. Home is beginning to sound good.” He looked at Mary, a direct, questioning gaze. “Boise's still a nice place to raise a family.”

She could think of nothing to say. Harry Berden was the kindest, most honest man she'd ever known, and yesterday—the day before yesterday—that oblique query would have at least given her something to ponder. Now it fell like a pebble in a frozen pond, creating no ripples.

After a moment he opened the front door of the car, then paused, frowning. “Ms. Morrow, I figure you'd like to know. We got a report yesterday that there's been two cases of Lassa in Oldport.”

Mary felt a chill at the back of her neck, and Rachel went pale. “That's only thirty miles away,” she whispered.

He nodded grimly. “Right.”

Neither Rachel nor Mary spoke as he got into his car and backed down the drive, not until Rachel said, “Mary, I think we'd better start making some plans.”

—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
HELLAS
(1821)

R
achel said once—stated categorically—that it is impossible for a wave to make a shape that is not perfectly graceful. Now at evening I look down at the beach and consider her dictum. In forty years I haven't forgotten it; the sea reminds me of it each day.

On this clear spring evening, the tide has gone out with the day, the sun has just set, its final moments marked with a pinpoint burst of incandescent green. The sky above the horizon is rose orange shading into pale yellow made green by its context, shading into warm blue and ultimately into ultramarine. There is little light left for the sea; it is pewter gray. The beach is umber verging on black, a somber expanse deserted by the tide. At the sea edge of this newly revealed strand, the waves have scoured out a topography of miniature hills and valleys, every valley a pool of captured seawater, every pool a mirror set in velvet umber, reflecting in reverse order the ultramarine, warm blue, green-hinting yellow, and rose orange. The shapes of these sky mirrors are all unique, the relationships of concave, convex curves complex and elegant. They are perfectly graceful.

I sit at the end of the table in the living room, my chair turned so I can look out the window at the beach and watch the children playing tag on the grass beyond the deck. Jonathan, the oldest, is also tallest, and he runs like a deer. Yet he lets Isaac catch him sometimes, and they fall laughing into the grass. Jonathan even lets eight-year-old Mary catch him, although she's so quick and lissome I wonder if he isn't fairly caught.

The youngest children, Deborah and Rachel, are downstairs being put to bed. Jerry is helping Miriam with that task, while Esther, Enid, and Grace are in the kitchen cleaning up after the evening meal. I can hear their voices, the clatter of silverware and pots. Bernadette is in the workroom grinding herbs for her medicines. Behind me, the fire crackles in the fireplace, beside me Stephen sits with his chin propped in his hand, and I remember my years of solitude here and know I'm fortunate to have such warm and peaceful evenings in my old age.

On the table is a stack of Rachel's watercolor paper cut into small rectangles. My hand still aches from wielding the old, dull scissors. I haven't yet begun writing the Chronicle, only preparing the paper. Fine rag watercolor paper: D'Arches rough, Whatman's hot press, Utrecht cold press. I've saved this paper all these years. Now I know why.

Stephen picks up a piece, runs his thumb over the rough surface. “Did you say this paper is handmade, Mary?”

“Yes, some of it.”

“Could we make paper here?”

How many times have I asked myself that question? “I think so, Stephen. I have a book on papermaking. Maybe you'd like to read it.”

“Yes, I would. Someday we'll have to make our own paper.”

I smile at that. The words right out of my mouth. “I'll find the book for you tomorrow.”

Not tonight. This is the sabbath. And this isn't one of my sanctioned lessons with Stephen. Sunday is supposedly a day of rest. It's also the day of the sabbath service: at least four hours of sermonizing and hymn singing. The children have no choice but to endure it, and I always feel sorry for them. Perhaps Jerry does, too. He usually plans something special for Sunday afternoon, and today it was a picnic on the Coho River. I didn't go along, but I'm proud of Jerry for making Sunday afternoons pleasurable for the children. When he was a child, his Sundays offered him no pleasure.

“Mary, what did you and Rachel do after . . . after your friends were killed?”

This may not be a sanctioned lesson, but Stephen is still curious, and I've never limited my teaching to the hours designated for school.

“Well, we barricaded ourselves from the outside world, Stephen.”

“Because of the Rovers?”

“Partly, although the local Rover population had been drastically reduced. No, what really drove us into isolation was Lassa fever.”

“Isolation? What do you mean?”

“Just that we made ourselves entirely self-sufficient so we wouldn't have to go out among other people for any reason. We were already
nearly
self-sufficient. We had land and water and livestock. We pooled our money to buy everything we'd need to keep going for—I don't know. A year or so. We never committed ourselves on the length of our retreat.” And never imagined it would, in a sense, be permanent.

“What kind of things did you buy?”

“Well, nonmotorized farm implements, for one thing, like the plow we still use. Of course, training Silver to pull it wasn't so easy. We bought seed, everything from clover to squash, canned goods by the case, flour, rice, and beans by the sack. Canning jars, kerosene, gasoline—for the chain saw, not the van. Medicines, veterinary supplies, clothing, and many more things I can't remember now. In a way, the preparation for our siege was good for us. It gave us something to take our minds off the grief, and we needed that, especially Rachel.”

Stephen's dark eyes are clouded. He nods and pulls in a deep breath. “How long did it take you to make all your preparations?”

“About a month and a half. By then the edge was off our grief, and even in our isolation, life returned to a kind of norm. There was more work without Connie and Jim to help, but I still did some writing, and Rachel did some painting. It was an oddly peaceful hiatus, yet we were never free of fear. We were living through the death throes of a golden age.” I look down at the blank sheets of fine rag watercolor paper, and Stephen waits patiently.

“It was reaching critical mass, Stephen, all the deadly factors coming together. We still had our window on the world. The television. We knew about the riots and revolutions and the cities surrendered to anarchy. We knew about the failure of the monsoon in India for the third year in a row, the locusts in the Mediterranean and Africa, the killer smogs in Europe and on the East Coast of this country, about the Sino-Russian War, the nuking of Jerusalem, the droughts all over the world. And, of course, there were always stories about the Lassa epidemic and starvation. It was falling apart out there, and yet Rachel and I kept hoping. Now I can't imagine why. It was too late for hope.”

Stephen seems to be watching the children, but his frown tells me his thoughts are elsewhere. “Miriam says it was prophesied, all the . . . falling apart.”

I make no comment on prophesies. “We were also aware, through our window, of the crisis over that Russian fishing fleet. Some American admiral decided they were too close to our coast and sank all twenty ships. There was a furor in the circles of power, and all the charges and countercharges had nothing to do with the fishing fleet. In fact, we'd been on fairly good terms with the Russians for a long time. But most wars began with a triviality. What was really happening was a kind of mass madness—the same kind of madness that developed in animal studies when a confined population increased past a crucial point. But we were supposed to be smarter than white rats. And yet . . . it finally happened.” I feel my eyes ache with tears even after all these years. That grief can't be salved by time, not for those of us who lived through that ultimate human catastrophe.

I wonder how many of us are left in the world now.

Stephen asks, “What was Armageddon like here at Amarna?”

I look out at the clear, brilliant sky. “September fifteenth. Indian summer. That evening, Rachel and I watched the six o'clock newscast—the one that came to us via the new Federal Information Broadcasting System. I always wondered what bureaucrat came up with that title, if there was one among them who had a sense of humor. I mean, I can't believe no one realized it would inevitably be abbreviated FIBS.”

Stephen smiles, but uneasily. “What did the newscast say?”

“Well, FIBS lived up to its acronym. Two days before, it had reported that cities were being evacuated in Russia, but on September fifteenth, Rachel and I—and the rest of the nation—were assured that negotiations were under way with the Russians, that the crisis was in fact over. So, we went out to the garden to pick zucchini and butternut squash. I remember a storm was coming in over the ocean from the southwest, but the sky was still clear in the east.”

“What did you see? How did you know what had happened?”

“We
didn't
know. We only assumed. First we heard the FEMA warning siren from Shiloh Beach. It was so far away, we could barely hear it. Then suddenly it stopped. That's when I looked at my watch. My digital watch. It had stopped, too. The numbers vanished. And in the eastern sky we saw the strange colors.”

“What . . . what were they like?”

I hesitate, trying to call up the words for those evanescent colors. They were no more amazing than what I see now in this sunset sky and in the mirrors in the sand. But before I can speak, I hear hurried footsteps behind me. Stephen turns, and I watch wariness take shape in his face.

“Stephen, what are you doing here?”

I look up at Miriam, and she looks down at me. She seems to expect me to answer the question. I remain silent, and Stephen rises.

“I'm just talking to Mary.”

“I can see that. You don't have a lesson today. It's the sabbath. Anyway, it's time for bed. Go out and tell the other children.”

He nods, glances uncertainly at me as he goes to the door. When it closes behind him, Miriam asks, “What were you talking to him about?”

“About the End,” I answer flatly. “About Armageddon.”

“What do
you
know about Armageddon?”

She's thinking of Saint John, of course. “Miriam, I know a great deal about it. I lived through it.” And she was born of the next generation. What I lived through is to her as much a legend, a mythic event, as Saint John's revelation. To her it is Saint John's revelation, whatever our Elder says, and however difficult it might be to explain the obvious discrepancies between revelation and reality. I wonder how she explains the fact that I survived. Only the blessed were supposed to survive her Armageddon.

Miriam's lips part to speak, and I read in her eyes a rankling rage unmasked. I don't know what I expect her to say, but I am for a moment afraid.

But it is never said. The rage is hidden behind cool indifference.

The children are coming in, faces flushed from their games. They each pause to wish me good night and kiss my cheek, then hurry past the kitchen and through the dining room to the basement door. Miriam turns and follows the children. I watch her until she disappears beyond the door, then I close my eyes to listen to the sounds of voices from the kitchen, the grinding of Bernadette's pestle, the crackling of the fire, but there's no warmth or peace here now.

At length, I look out at the beach. The color is almost gone. And I think about Stephen's question: what was Armageddon like?

I don't know what it was like anywhere else. I can guess, but I don't know. Here, it was a day much like this one, except at the other end of the year.

And it was a day of terror beyond comprehension. After all these years, I still grieve for it.

But I don't understand it. I will never understand it.