A Gift Upon the Shore (28 page)

She lifted her face to his, whispered, “Then make love to me, Luke. Tonight. Make love to me if you love me.”

He pulled away from her, gently but uncompromisingly.

“The Doctor will marry us when we get to the Ark.”

Mary felt those softly spoken words as she had his slap on her face that June day at Amarna. She got to her feet, stared down at him.

“I suppose now it's
fornication!
”

He fixed his gaze on the ground. “It's just not right. . . .”

“Why was it right at Amarna? Not once, but many times it was right!”

“Mary, that was different,” he mumbled.

She walked out of the firelight to her sleeping bag, unlaced her boots with shaking hands, then got inside the bag, jerked the zipper closed, bitter words on her lips crying to be spoken. But she held them back. She heard Luke getting into his sleeping bag, the zipper buzzing.

She lay facing away from him, toward the sea, and pressed a hand to her body, wondering again if that useless organ within was becoming a womb.

If not, would she have to wait for a sanctioned visitation from her sanctioned husband? The thought brought a sardonic, silent laugh.

“I can't hear it.”

Mary pushed the bandanna away from her ears and looked back along the dirt road cut through a stand of second-growth Douglas fir. Alders, vines, and grass encroached on the road. The morning sun fell in misted shafts through the trees. The only sound she heard was the chromatic warble of a bird she and Rachel had identified only by its call and named the mad bird for the manic edge in its repetitive song.

“You can't hear what?” Luke asked.

“I can't hear the ocean.” The words were like the closing of a door.

“No, it's at least two miles behind us.” With one hand on her cheek, he turned her face toward him. “You'll miss the ocean, won't you?”

She looked up at him, reveling in his solicitude. Yet she recognized behind it the anticipation he couldn't contain. Luke was coming home. After a year, two months, and ten days, he was coming home, and from the moment he woke her this morning with a gentle kiss, he had been so full of joy for his homecoming that she had warmed to it, held on to it, hoping to make his homecoming her own.

“Come on, Mary, just a little farther, then there's a view of the Ark.”

And he set off down the road with long strides. She hurried to catch up with him, and when they reached the viewpoint, he stopped, the tears in his eyes at odds with his smile. “There it is, Mary. There's Canaan Valley. Oh, Lord, praised be Thy name!”

They stood at the top of a steep slope shorn of trees in an old clear-cut. Caught somewhere between fear and hope, Mary looked southeast into a valley cradled between two low, forested ridges. The valley had an east-west alignment, with the river Luke called the Jordan trailing along the south boundary, the sun flashing on its dark waters between the barred shadows of the trees on the far bank. At the center of the valley, arranged in a circle perhaps four hundred feet in diameter, stood the twelve households Luke had described, all built of peeled logs, roofed with hand-split shakes. Each household had three small, shuttered windows on its long back wall and a brick chimney against one of the shorter end walls. The air was veiled with their smoke. Rock-lined paths led from the households to the center of the circle like twelve spokes toward the hub of a wheel. At the hub stood the church. It was also built of logs and shakes, the entrance facing west beneath a steeple that thrust high above everything around it and pointed a long shadow toward Mary and Luke.

But Luke hadn't told her about the palisades of vertical logs that connected the households at their outside corners, that made a fort of the circle, and she wondered what enemies those walls were built to exclude.

All of the valley was fenced. Barbed wire, perhaps; she could only see the evenly spaced fence posts from here. A road emerged from the forest in the northwest at an angle toward the southeast, passed a gate on the fence line, then continued at that angle until it reached the median of the valley, where it turned east toward the open gate of the Ark. South of the road lay a huge garden and a greenhouse. Across the road on the north was another garden, and east of that, an orchard, and farther east, a cemetery. Near the river, a barn presided over a corral and a cluster of smaller buildings. In the pasture at the northeast end of the valley, cattle, horses, sheep, and goats grazed. The southeast end was fenced off for a hay field; pyramids of curing hay dotted the pale stubble. And apparently the Flock was successful at growing grain of some sort this far inland. The tawny field at the west end of the valley was ready for harvest.

Mary released her pent breath in a sigh of satisfaction. The orderly arrangement of fields and fences and buildings seemed inevitable and right. She found Luke's hand in hers, and knew the future hung suspended for them on a golden thread, and there was beauty in it.

And there were people.

At first she didn't recognize the tiny, dark objects moving about in the gardens and fields, and she wasn't prepared for the exhilaration galvanized by that recognition.

There were more than fifty
people
down there—feeling, talking, thinking, laughing, crying, living human beings.

She whispered, “Luke, there are so many people.”

“Yes, Mary. You'll never be lonely again.” He pulled her bandanna down a little over her forehead, tightened the knot at the back of her neck, then cupped her face in his hands. “They'll be surprised to see a woman in pants, but that can be remedied. I want them to see how strong and proud you are, Mary Hope. I want them all to love you as I do.” He leaned down to kiss her, lingering long over it.

Mary couldn't doubt it now. This was her homecoming, too. Of course, these people would have different beliefs and standards, but she would adapt, she would make herself acceptable, she would do anything necessary to become a part of this living community, to make her children part of humankind.

They were only a few yards from the fence-line gate when the church bell began ringing. Mary wondered, and laughed at the thought, if the bell was tolling for them in a way John Donne hadn't intended.

Luke lengthened his stride. “The noon bell. Everybody'll be going back to the Ark for midday meal.” He reached the gate and unhooked the chain, called out to the four men leaving the west field. They stopped, staring at him, while he pushed through the gate, fumbling at the straps of his pack. The men approached cautiously, and Luke flung off the pack and ran toward them, and when they recognized him, they also began running, and they met with embraces and jubilant cries. Men and women were streaming out of the gardens now. Shouts brought more out of the Ark, and Luke walked up the road to meet the continually swelling throng.

Mary didn't take exception to being left behind. She unbuckled her pack, put it down by Luke's, and closed the gate, then watched the milling crowd in which he had lost himself. So much joy there, both for Luke and his friends. She caught a glimpse of Luke holding a baby. Was it his? She realized then how few children there were— no more than seven under the age of fifteen—and how few old people.

All the men were bearded with long hair confined by headbands. Many of them wore knit sweaters of undyed wool; others wore collarless, long-sleeved shirts of the same ivory color. Their loose pants were a deep maroon, stuffed into the tops of boots, some of which were leftovers from Before, while others were a kind of moccasin boot laced nearly to the knee.

The women were similarly clothed, except they wore long, dark skirts and white scarves tied at the back of the neck, as Luke had tied her bandanna. But it was red, and Mary was acutely aware of how strange she'd look to these people—a woman with a red head covering, a woman wearing pants.

There was a man walking at a brisk pace down the road from the Ark, and Mary felt every muscle tighten. This was the Doctor. She could tell little about him at this distance except that he was tall and lean to the edge of emaciation; that he had long, gray hair fine enough to blow back from his face with his vigorous strides; that his beard fell nearly to his waist. What convinced her that he was the Doctor was the reaction of the Flock. They moved as one toward him, but didn't envelop him as they had Luke. They left him a little space, and in that space he and Luke met and embraced.

They talked for a while, and finally Luke, then the Doctor, then the rest of the Flock, turned to look at Mary. Soon they all began moving in her direction, the Doctor, with Luke at his side, in the lead. She stood fast, her heart pounding, until Luke motioned her to come forward.

She did, and when she was about twenty feet away, the Doctor stopped. Luke and the Flock took their cue from him and also stopped. They were silent. Over fifty people, and the only sound she heard was the fretful crying of the baby. She was the focal point of every eye, and she read in them a spectrum of hope, suspicion, doubt, amazement, and curiosity. But it was the Doctor who held her attention as she approached him. And to see the Doctor and Luke side by side was to see Luke in the present and in the future. The long, narrow faces were cast of the same mold, the deep-set eyes were of the same color, and there was in the Doctor's gray hair and beard a sandy cast that hinted that he had once been as copper-haired as Luke was now.

Yet Mary doubted Luke would ever attain the penetrating light in the Doctor's eyes, the stunning aura of potent vitality. A man of visions, she reminded herself, the kind of visions that might once have classified him as less than sane. But how many of the movers and makers of history had been certifiably sane?

On his headband, in red letters on white, were the words
HE WAS A BURNING AND A SHINING LIGHT
.

She stopped a few paces from him, meeting his intent gaze in part because she was fascinated by it. Mesmerized? Perhaps. His voice, deep and resonant, matched the power of his presence. “Mary Hope, have you taken Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior? Have you been reborn in Him?”

The questions were like a dash of cold water in her face. But why hadn't she expected them? She looked at Luke, found him gazing hopefully at her. Was he worried about what she might say?

She faced the Doctor. “Yes, sir, I
have
taken Jesus into my heart as my savior.” Then she lowered her eyes submissively and heard a murmur of comment from the Flock. There seemed to be no hostility in it. She couldn't know yet whether the Doctor was pleased.

That resonant voice again. She looked up attentively while he asked, “And do you, Mary Hope, know in your heart that Armageddon has come, that Jesus will soon descend to Earth to seek out the righteous and carry them in His bosom to heaven?”

With that question, it was harder to meet his gaze. She replied, “Jesus spoke through Saint John the Divine and said, ‘Surely I come . . . quickly.' ” And how had she remembered that quotation, except that at the time she read it—three months ago, at least—it had seemed so sadly futile?

But her often wayward memory served her well. The Doctor
was
pleased. He smiled, and Mary wanted to weep with relief. Then he took a step toward her, held out his strong, callused hand, and waited until she put her hand in his. “Welcome to the Ark, Mary Hope.” And as the Flock murmured its reflected pleasure he held out his other hand to Luke and said, “Luke tells me the two of you wish to be married.”

“Yes, sir, we do.” She looked at Luke, wishing she could match the blush that reddened his cheeks.

The Doctor laughed. “By the way, you needn't call me sir. At the Ark we call each other Sister and Brother. Luke, you have returned with your Ruth, and you must be her Boaz. Sister Mary, this is for you the first day. On the third day you and Luke will be married.”

The murmurs of the crowd turned to shouts, and Mary and Luke were swept toward the Ark by the jubilant Flock. The church bell began ringing as they passed through the gate, and this time Mary knew the bells were tolling for them, tolling not for death, but for hope.

Luke was an Elder.

Mary lay under a smother of quilts in the middle of a double bed in darkness as dense as a womb, and she couldn't keep her eyes closed, even though there was nothing for them to register. The images were all out of her memory, and she was trying to put them in order, to make sense of this her first day at the Ark.

Luke was an Elder by the Doctor's decree, apparently. An honor, she was given to understand, for a man so young.

She turned on her side and drew her knees up, a sigh escaping her. She wanted Luke with her in this bed now, not two nights hence; she wanted him to hold her, to kiss her, to taste her nipples; she wanted him inside her, wanted that affirmation, that covenant. She stared into the darkness and listened to the silence, the absence of the sea.

This was Luke's household now. This bed, this room would be theirs once they were properly married. An oppressively small room with one tiny, shuttered window. A chest, pegs driven into the wall for a closet. A chamber pot. The privies were beyond the smithy, far enough away that chamber pots were a necessity, not a convenience. There was no mirror. She hadn't seen a mirror anywhere at the Ark.

This bedroom was one of four such cubicles that together occupied two-thirds of the rectangular building. The remaining third was left to a kitchen–dining room. She wondered how these households could have contained nine or ten people as they had before the End. Now most of them housed four or five. There would be six in this one now that Luke had come home with his bride-to-be.

Tonight Luke also slept alone, and she wondered if he found sleep as elusive as she did.

The other four members of the household were doubled up in the remaining two bedrooms. She became aware of a rhythmic murmur that at first made her wonder if an odd turn of wind had brought her the sound of the sea. But it was only snoring from the next room, the room shared tonight by Nehemiah and his nephew Adam. Old Nehemiah, he was called, and he didn't seem to take exception to it. He and Adam, a boy of fourteen, were the only survivors of a family that had once numbered eight people.