Draw the Dark (29 page)

Tottering to the very brink, I peered past the lip of the open door and down into all that bizarre radiance. Yes, I could see it all, and it was as I’d imagined: the rugged mountains, the clawing trees, and that queer spiked mountain....

And something else:
my
face, shining, pulling together as if I peered into a mirror made from the sun.

Come.
The light wavered and whispered, and now I could smell it, an intoxicating fragrance not of this earth and so rich I wanted to fall into it, into that mask of myself.
All you have to do is step through the door.

Yes, all I would have to do is fall . . .

Then, cutting through the darkness, I heard Uncle Hank: “Christian!
CHRISTIAN!
”

There was no mistaking the panic in that voice. Or the love. He called again, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t, not just yet.

Because here was the hell of it: I loved my mother. Didn’t I? Or did I only love a mirage? A memory?

I couldn’t decide. I didn’t know. I balanced on the brink of two worlds, each with its claim and the promise that love waited as a reward....

“Christian?” I could tell from his voice that he was moving off in the wrong direction, farther away. If I wanted to be found, I would have to guide him.

All you have to do is reach out and take his hand.
That’s another thing Dr. Rainier had said.

Then I heard something else above the call of the light and my uncle’s shouts. I heard Sarah.

She was still curled in on herself, but she was moaning, and I knew she would never get out of these woods without help.

I couldn’t do that to her, not to Sarah, who was kind to me and good.

So I turned away from the door.

Wait
, whispered the light, though it seemed to scream in my head.
Wait
, my double sighed.

“Mom.” Sarah was crying and rocking. “Oh Mom, Mommy...”

Wait...

I knew what I had to do.

I closed that door. I erased it, scuffing the dirt with my shoes, but I was crying as I did it. The light dissolved and splintered through my tears, and then it was gone.

Then I went to Sarah and held her and shouted for my uncle. And I didn’t let her go until we were found.

“Is she going to be all right?” I asked. We were in the waiting room by then because Reverend Schoenberg was still a couple of hours away, and I wanted to stay until he got there. I hadn’t seen Sarah since they loaded her into a second ambulance, but Uncle Hank said that Dr. Rainier was with her.

“If Mrs. Schoenberg pulls through, I don’t think she’s going to be the same woman,” Uncle Hank said, heavily. “We’ll just have to wait and see. What I don’t understand is where Dekker got himself to. You say he followed you into the woods?” When I only nodded, he continued, “Then there ought to be some trace. A trail, something, but there’s nothing. We got his bike, so I know he didn’t use that to get away. Of course, his two buddies aren’t saying anything.” He checked his watch. “It’ll be light in another couple hours. Maybe then, with dogs . . .”

“Maybe,” I said. But I knew this world had seen the last of Karl Dekker.

I spotted Dr. Rainier pushing out of the elevator, and we stood as she came down the hall. “How is Sarah?” I asked.

“Sleeping. They’ve sedated her. Between the medication and the shock, she’ll probably sleep until this afternoon. Physically, she’s fine, but her memory’s pretty foggy right now. We’ve ruled out trauma. Her CT and neuro exam are clean. So we’ll just have to wait, see if this psychogenic amnesia clears,” said Dr. Rainier.

“She said nothing?” asked Uncle Hank. “She can’t remember
anything
?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that. She remembers, I think, but what she says doesn’t make sense.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said that the light ate him . . . ate Dekker.” Dr. Rainier’s eyes never left my face. “She said the light destroyed the darkness.”

I couldn’t speak.

“You’re right. That doesn’t make sense,” said Uncle Hank.

“Well,” said Dr. Rainier, “not to you or me.”

Maybe twenty minutes later, Justin came by and said that the guy with the dogs was maybe a half hour away from the Schoenbergs’ place. “Fire chief says the house is gonna be okay. They’ll need to build a new porch, though.” He went off to find Uncle Hank, and I thought about maybe settling in for a nap. I was so keyed up, I was sure I wouldn’t get any sleep.

I woke when someone touched my shoulder. “Are you Christian Cage?”

“What?” Blinking, I pushed out of my slump. My neck hurt and drool slicked my chin. A lean man with clear brown eyes and a well-trimmed beard stood over me. “Yeah, yeah, I’m Christian.”

He stuck out his hand. “Rabbi Saltzman. We spoke?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Dazed, I grasped his hand. His grip was firm, but his skin was warm. We shook, and I said, “What time is it? What are you doing here?”

“It’s around nine. May I sit with you?”

“Hunh? Sure.” I scrubbed my face with my hands as he dropped into the chair next to mine, and I noticed he wore a small crocheted cap with a Star of David.

He said, “I had already arranged to come up for David Witek’s body today, but then I heard about Mrs. Schoenberg.”

“How did you—?”

“Steve Schoenberg and I were at the same conference. I didn’t think he should be alone, so we drove up together. He’s with his wife now.”

“She’s out of surgery?” I
had
slept soundly. “How is she?”

“She’s alive. That’s all anyone can say. They’ll move her to Milwaukee this afternoon. You want to maybe wash up and then get some breakfast? I’ll bet we can scrounge up toiletries for you somewhere.”

Well yeah, my mouth
did
taste like the bottom of a car. An ER nurse brought me a little packet of stuff they give to patients and a clean scrub shirt. Then she let me into a doctors’ on-call room, which had its own bathroom and shower. After I got cleaned up, Rabbi Saltzman and I went to the cafeteria. The food was lousy—pancakes like Frisbees—but I was starved, and I ate every scrap.

Rabbi Saltzman had coffee. He waited until I slowed down and then said, “I hear you’ve had quite a night. Actually, speaking with Dr. Rainier, it seems to me that you’ve had quite the month.”

The pancakes turned to lead in my stomach. “What did she say?”

He must’ve read my mind because he said, “Nothing personal, if that’s what you’re worried about. She told me about what happened last week, you figuring out about the bodies in the barn. She was a little . . . vague about how you did that. I gather that you’ve had some pretty strange experiences.” He paused, as if expecting that I might respond. It seemed best to keep my mouth shut, so I did.

He waited another moment and then changed the subject. “Do you still want to know what happened to the Jews of Winter? There aren’t many records. So much is . . .” He thought about it. “Well, not gone, but it is history, and if there’s one thing we Jews need to remember is that life isn’t lived in the past. So many Jews define their Jewishness only around the Holocaust, but our history stretches for thousands of years. So we should
remember
, we shouldn’t forget, and we should abide by the past’s lessons, but we can’t remain there.”

I mulled that one over and was surprised that I even had to think about what I wanted to know, if anything. In a way, I was still curious, but I felt as if I’d reached some sort of personal closure. There was much I’d already solved, more that I would never know—and while I did not believe that ignorance was bliss, I was pretty clear I could fill in the gaps.

So what popped out of my mouth was kind of surprising, even to me. “I would like to know what happened to the cemetery. You had to have one.”

Rabbi Saltzman pushed back from the table. “Would you like to see it?”

“What’s left of it,” said Rabbi Saltzman. “Not very impressive, I’m afraid.”

Well, not exactly true. We stood by the edge of that grove of white pines, the ones everyone had always said were planted by shipbuilders. I told Rabbi Saltzman that, and he just shrugged.

“People remember what they want to remember. Say something enough times, and people will start to believe it. But the truth is that when the Jews left, they took their dead with them and planted these trees. The only things they left
here
were their sacred books.” At my questioning look, he said, “Jews believe that God’s name must never be destroyed. So any worn-out prayer book or Torah scroll or any book with God’s name or written in Hebrew is placed in a special storeroom, a
genizah
. Every seven years, the genizah’s contents are buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

“So the books and Torahs are still out here? In the
ground
?”

“Yes. By this time, though, they’re the trees, don’t you think?”

I
had
always felt that this grove was different. I thought of the hours I had lain on this sacred ground and the intense peace that would seep into my body. “Why did they take everyone with them?”

Rabbi Saltzman didn’t answer at first. He stared into the grove’s shadows as a breath of wind whispered through the high branches. Then he said, “Because of Joseph’s bones. You know the story? In Genesis?”

“No.”

“Right before he died, Joseph made the children of Israel promise to take his bones when they left Egypt:
God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.
At the time, they probably thought he was crazy because life was good for them in Goshen, so why should they leave? But they promised. Eventually, of course, they became slaves. When God sent Moses and Aaron to lead them to freedom, Moses kept the promise and gathered up Joseph’s bones to take with them.”

“So Moses buried him?”

“No, Moses was not allowed into the Promised Land. It was up to Joshua, finally, to give Joseph a proper burial in Shechem, in a plot of land that Jacob, Joseph’s father, had bought centuries before.”

“And that’s why you’re here for Mr. Witek.”

“To take him back, yes. I’ve also made arrangements for his father’s remains when the pathologist releases them.” Rabbi Saltzman hesitated and then said, “And the baby, even if it turns out not to be related to the Witeks.”

I didn’t think there was much chance of that, but I said, “Why would you do that? If it’s not a Jew?”

“It seems the right thing to do. Who else will mourn that child?”

No one, I thought. No one but me.

“We Jews don’t like leaving anyone behind,” Rabbi Saltzman continued, and then he gave me a small grin. “I guess you could say that we’re like God’s Marines that way.”

But I told Rabbi Saltzman everything. Pretty much. Not about Aunt Jean or Miss Stefancyzk or anything like that. That was part of a story that had nothing to do with David Witek.

Instead, I told the rabbi about the barn, meeting Mr. Witek in the home, my nightmares, the paintings. Drawing that final confrontation and then knowing where to look for David’s father. I thought about telling him about the light and Dekker, but I didn’t.

He listened and didn’t interrupt. When I was done, he was silent a few moments longer and then said, simply, “I believe you.”

“You do?” I searched his face for a lie, but his eyes were gentle and clear. “It sounds nuts . . . I mean, when you think about it.”

“Oh, I suppose there were a few people who thought Moses had gone off the deep end when he claimed to have seen a burning bush that wasn’t destroyed. Or Jacob when he dreamt his ladder of angels.”

“You’re saying it was . . . God?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters. If you want to get scriptural about it, there are passages in Genesis and Deuteronomy, where it seems that people on the verge of death gain tremendous prophetic or clairvoyant powers. So maybe that happened to David. His mind had fixed on the one thing he could not leave behind, but he could no longer act for himself. Either he chose you or your mind found his, and then you acted because he couldn’t. You did a great mitzvah.”

“A . . . what? Is that like a good deed?”

He laughed. “Let me put it to you this way: In our religion, we have what is called the
chevra kadisha
, a holy society. These are men and women who give of themselves to the dead, preparing the body according to our laws and protecting the body until burial. To do so is a
chesed shel emet
, a good deed of truth. It is a kindness done without ulterior motive because the dead can never repay the favor.” He put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “That is what you have done for David. I don’t know what you believe, personally, but remember this: What you did was a great kindness, and God will not forget.”