Drought (10 page)

Chapter 13

Only half the Congregants are back in their seats with more food when the doors creak, and then sunshine is spilling into the room. We’re freed.

Nobody stands to go to the front—all bolt more food into their mouths, but their eyes are on the door.

Darwin West steps through, the sun so bright behind him I can’t see his face. But I know the silhouette of his leather hat and the swirl of his long coat.

“I’ll need all the men,” he announces. “And the rest of you get out to the woods.”

This strange respite is over. Our normal lives begin again—except for the tiny lump of paper in my pocket.

The room is filled with the sound of spoons clattering into bowls, onto tables, onto the floor. The men rush outside and the rest of us form a line to get our cups and spoons.

I am so aware of Ford’s note that it burns like a tiny hot stone in my pocket. I make sure to keep my eyes far away from him, only staring straight ahead. I take my cup and my spoon and move for the woods.

Then I see what the trucks were doing, though I don’t understand it. There are piles of long, long logs sitting on the side of the road. Already the men are working on stacking them in pyramids. Are they firewood? Why, in the middle of summer? But if not that—what?

One of the men staggers away from the logs, gripping his stomach. Zeke Pelling, Jonah’s older brother. He falls on his knees, and then he empties his stomach onto the dirt.

My own clenches, and I look away fast.

“Move slowly at first.” Mother is next to me, her spoon clattering loosely inside the cup. “Our bodies aren’t used to so much food.”

An Overseer yanks Zeke to his feet and motions for him to return to the logs.

“What a waste,” Mother mutters.

She stalks off into the woods and I hurry too, but not in her direction. I will find a quiet, shady spot to read my note—far from anyone’s eyes.

I slip through the woods faster than a fox hunting in moonlight, barely brushing the bushes or branches as I seek a hiding place.

But Hope finds me first.

“Ruby!” She waves from a clump of goldenrod.

I sit beside her. The paper makes a small crinkling noise, but I keep my head down and try to act as if nothing is different.

“My buttons are about to burst!” Hope pats her stomach.

“Breakfast was fine.” All I want to do is race away and read Ford’s note.

Her smile falls away. “Are you all right? Is it Ellie?”

“I … Yes.” I keep my eyes away from hers.

“I could just imagine her telling us to eat as much as a Pelling breakfast. Couldn’t you?”

I grin. “There’s no keeping up with the Pellings.”

“No fooling.” Hope lifts her spoon to start working, but her dreamy smile is back. “Remember how we’d tell those boys we were having a race—then we’d sneak away and play pretend without them?”

“You made us crowns from ferns,” I say. I kept mine for weeks, in the cabin, until they crumbled.

“And magic wands too.” Hope holds her spoon up with a rueful look. “Think we could do something with these?”

“Get water, is all.”

She sighs and nods.

“I … I probably shouldn’t harvest so close to you,” I tell her. “The Overseers might not like it.”

“Oh. I suppose.” She looks hurt.

After Hope took up with Gabe, I could never find time alone with her. Now I’m lying, just to get away.

“I’ll look for you later today. Farther away from the Overseers,” I promise.

“Find lots of water, Ruby.” She lifts her cup, briefly.

I tap my cup against hers. “And you.”

As soon as I’m out of sight, I start to hurry again, trying to find a place to read Ford’s note.

Finally I find a fallen tree, surrounded by half-browned clumps of greenery: a hiding place. I slide between them and pray nobody can see the colored bits of my dress through the screen of the tree. I’ll have to be fast.

I smooth the note over the curve of my bended knee. The writing is blue, and thick, the edges blurred as if the note was written on damp paper. There are only a few lines—small, sloped handwriting that seems almost feminine.

She’s in the field near the birch grove. Look for the tallest clump of grasses
.

At first I don’t understand. Who’s there? But then I remember: Ellie is dead. And only Ford, and that other Overseer, might know where she is now.

The birch grove is far away from us. We don’t usually harvest there; it’s a long walk, and not nearly worth the energy. The birches have pushed away all undergrowth and don’t offer drops of water from their leaves. Most places in the woods are better than the grove for meeting our quotas.

I want to go to her. I want to see her grave for myself, say good-bye at her final resting place.

But this isn’t the time to visit Ellie. One cup, full, by sunset. It’s nearly impossible. Mother might suffer tonight if I fail, and I can’t add any more lashes to her shoulders. And yet, and yet, I can’t stand to think of Ellie there alone, no prayers said over her.

I crawl out and stretch to standing. Nobody seems to be near. I start toward Ellie’s grave in a trot, the fastest I dare go with water in my cup and roots reaching out to hobble me at every step.

I pass through thick underbrush and tall oaks, and then a shorter group of pine and blueberry bushes. The birds have picked the berries clean, mostly—all that’s left are the green berries and a few shriveled ones. On any other day I would stop to eat them, as Mother taught me. But Ellie’s grave is more important, and I press on.

When I see a plant or tree that looks very wet, I stop to gather water. I scrape a little off a cypress tree’s ragged bark, and coax more moisture from the underside of a half-dead toadstool. But more than anything, I hurry toward Ellie.

Before I reach the birch grove, I hear the wind rattling the leaves, a dry sound that feels like a rebuke. My cup is not even a quarter full, at midday, and here I am anyway.

“I should go back,” I tell myself. But instead I step into the grove, looking at the field beyond it. The birch roots are thick and knobby, poking up through the ground and reaching for my toes. I have to look down and work carefully not to trip, always keeping my cup steady.

And then my toes land on the yellowed, pointy grass of the field. It’s not grown very tall this year. But still, bright flowers poke above, with pink- and purple-fringed edges. They are surviving the drought, growing the same as if it rained every day.

I stop walking. I look over the field and its determined flowers, wondering where they put Ellie. And then I see it, perhaps fifteen paces away: a long fresh-turned line of dirt. Something glints from it, for a second, but then the breeze rattles the birch leaves again and it’s only dirt, no shine.

Now that she is so close, I can’t make my feet hurry. I take a deep breath and take one forced step, then another.

It feels wrong to come without something for her. The apple still sits in my pocket—I can smell it, even though it’s tucked away—and I imagine leaving it as a gift, a tribute, for Ellie.

But I know what she would say.

Save it for yourself
, she’d tell me.
Don’t waste that on a dead woman
.

So instead I bend and pick a fistful of wildflowers for her. I am careful to take them sparingly, one here, one there, so it doesn’t look like I was here. Ellie wouldn’t like me taking a pretty thing and making it ugly.

It feels right to go to Ellie now, gripping my small bouquet in one hand, my cup in the other. The flowers spill over the top of my hand, tickling my skin with their feathered edges. I lift them to smell, but find only the scent of dirt.

I take one step, and another, and then I am at her grave.

The clumped pile of dirt seems too short, as if for a child. It is mounded higher than the rest of the ground, and another pile of dirt sits to the side of her grave; they didn’t bother to put all the dirt back when they put her in the ground.

I set my cup carefully to the side, making sure it won’t tip. Then I kneel to touch the edge of the dirt.

“It’s me, Ellie,” I tell her. I set my flowers near the top of the dirt, where I imagine Ellie’s hands would be.

She’s in there, our Ellie. Darwin denied her. Otto didn’t save her. And I failed her too. I’m Leader. But I didn’t change anything. I let Mother and the Elders convince me different. Then I didn’t even bring the medicine in time.

Anger fills me so fast that it’s hard to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I should have found a way … a way to get you help.”

I bend low over the dirt, my palms flat against it. My eyelids sting and I know the tears are coming—until I see a glint, again, tucked in the grass near her grave. The surprise makes me sit up and forget my tears.

It’s nothing natural. Perhaps it’s a trap left by the Overseers. Did Ford give me his note only so he could catch me? So he could hurt me, like all the others?

I creep close, checking the grass for ropes or loops that might set off a trap. Mother’s taught me enough to know how to be careful.

But then I see it’s not a trap. The glint comes from a shiny, thin sheet wrapped around an enormous bunch of flowers. I pull the bundle close; a heavy scent comes from them.

I’ve never seen anything like these big, thick-headed things. I bury my nose in the flowers, already half limp, and breathe deep. They smell like nothing else I’ve ever smelled—like nothing to do with Ellie. But even so, they are beautiful.

This is nothing you can find in the woods. Someone from the outside world came here and left these.

I know who it was, even before I see the card tucked into the middle of the flowers. A chill runs down my arms as I pull the card out and read it.

Rest with God
.

And then:
I’m sorry
.

There’s no signature, but the handwriting matches the note that Ford gave me.

“He’s sorry,” I tell Ellie.

The flowers’ color makes me think of blood, half dried. I squeeze one and find its petals so tightly packed that it pushes back against my touch.

“I don’t want him to be sorry.” A sob chokes off my voice.

I wish I’d been brave enough to tell Ellie about Ford. But I’m not sure what there was to say.

“An Overseer left flowers for you, Ellie.” I turn back to her grave and set them on the dirt. “Can you believe that?”

I lift my face to the sun, at its high point, punishing me with its brightness. I have to close my eyes to keep its rays out.

“They took you away, Ellie. They wouldn’t let us bury you.”

When I open my eyes, I see how wrong, how sorry, my wildflowers look next to the bounty of shiny-wrapped modern flowers.

Ellie belongs to the Congregation, not to an Overseer—no matter how strange and kind he is. So I pick up his flowers and walk to the edge of the woods. I fling them so hard that the plastic splits open in the air and the flowers scatter over the birch grove floor.

Then I return to Ellie, still fresh with anger—anger at Ford, at Darwin West, at Otto, at Ellie even … and at myself. I stand over her grave, pick up the pewter cup that I left sitting next to her. There’s even less water than before, I think. The noon sun probably boiled some right out of the cup. I should leave now and start gathering, if there’s any hope of meeting my quota.

“Is this what Otto wants?” I ask Ellie. “He wants us to suffer?”

Perhaps she’s with him now. Perhaps she knows the answer to that question.

The wildflowers on her grave are already limp. Soon they’ll go dry, and then the wind will blow them away. In another year or two, her grave will be covered over with grass.

Nobody will even know she was ever here.

“Otto didn’t save you,” I say. “You believed, and he didn’t come.”

I tip my head back and howl out all the rage and desperation in my body.

Will Overseers hear me? I don’t care. Let them come.

Let them beat me, and see how I heal. Let them spill blood on Ellie’s grave. It’s too late for her. But maybe it will nourish the grasses and roots that are her new family.

The birds scatter from the trees and rush away. I imagine their finding the Overseers and telling them where I am, and what I am doing—or not doing.

I think of how Ellie held me when I was smaller and then even as I grew too big, my legs dangling past her knees. She stroked her hand over my hair and whispered things to ease my life. She whispered stories, and sweet things, and reminders to believe in Otto.

“You never came!” I shout to the skies.

She tucked me in her bed when my stomach hurt or when I skinned my knee. She picked sweet clover and taught me to break its flowers with my teeth and suck the sweet honey out. She told me stories of my mother before she became a hard wall between the Overseers and the Congregation.

“Why didn’t you let me help you? Why did you die?” I shout.

Nobody comes, and nobody answers. I howl until my body is limp and there’s no sound left in it. I collapse on the grass next to Ellie’s grave and stare up at the sky.

I came here to pray over her grave. But there aren’t any prayers in me now. All I have is questions, and rage.

“You’re the last one,” I whisper. “Nobody else is going to die a slave. I swear it.”

A bug lights on my forehead and I brush it away; my hand comes away wet. Tears.

I can’t waste any sort of water. I sit up and carefully wipe the tears from my cheeks into the cup. It’s disgusting, and necessary, and that makes me cry even more.

There’s a loud crack in the woods. Fear dries my tears instantly, and I look around. All I see are the birches, with little place for someone to hide, and the stubby yellow grasses. Nobody is here but me.

Still, it’s better if I leave. I’ve got to find water and get back to the clearing before dark. Ellie wouldn’t want me to linger any more—indeed, she would have told me to not come at all.

“Good-bye,” I say. “I’ll come back some time to see you.”

I wish I could tell everyone where she is. But they’d ask too many questions. This is not a place you stumble upon.

With one last look, I step back into the birch grove. My toe lands on one of the flowers from Ford. A sweet smell winds up to my nose.