Life Sentence (12 page)

As Milton returned, the noise from the cemetery
calmed back down to the persistent, welcoming moan. Now was the
final part of the rite. My dad took my hand and we walked with
Milton to the designated spot, just at the edge of the light and
away from the other people.

In a loud voice, Milton continued the words of the
ceremony. “Zoey, you come before us tonight of your own choosing,
and with the full permission of your parents?”

“I do,” I said, and my mom and dad agreed at the
same time. My head was bowed slightly, and my dad was right at my
side, his big hand on my right shoulder. I don’t think it would’ve
mattered much if I had looked up, it was so dark now in the woods,
but the path had been laid and measured out so that as long as we
took the steps at the right moments in the ceremony, we would be
where we were supposed to be.

“Good. Then lead her forward, Jack.” We took two
steps as Milton spoke the next part. “Zoey, you are at the
beginning of adulthood. You must tell us what this means to you and
how you will follow your new path.”

We stopped. It was hard to make my voice clear and
loud, with my head bent down and being so nervous, but I took a
deep breath and forced the words, as harsh as they sounded to me at
the time. “Death is easy; life is hard. Childhood was easy, now
life will be hard. I vow to put away childish things and always
follow what is difficult, right, and just, as written in the laws
of our community.”

“You speak of what is right, Zoey, but there are
many laws. On which two are all the others based? Tell me the first
and most important.” Two more steps.

“To protect the living.”

“To protect the living requires much training and
dedication. Jack Lawson, is your daughter ready for such
responsibility?” Another two steps and we stopped.

I could hear in his voice Dad was nervous too, and
he wasn’t the sort, but Milton always made him a little uneasy, in
a good sort of way—the uneasiness that comes from an intimacy full
of difference and mystery. And in the dark woods that summer night
there was plenty besides Milton to make anyone nervous in more
physical, visceral ways. “She has trained long with staff and with
gun, in all weather, at night and in the day. She is as ready as
any of us to face life and serve her people.”

“And the second great law of our community, Zoey,”
Milton continued, “the one we affirm this night most of all?” Two
more steps.

The moaning right in front of me had not
crescendoed, but I was so much closer that it was a palpable
trembling throughout my head and body. Without tilting my head up,
I rolled my eyes up as high as they would go, so I was looking in
front of myself. The darkness was a blank curtain. I could hear the
rustling of their clothes, and I began to smell them—no longer
rotted, but simply musty, worn-out, like forgotten, useless things
dissipating until only vapors remain. I over pronounced each word
in a hoarse shout, casting it at the wall of dead sounds, “To honor
the dead.”

Milton paused. “That is correct, Zoey, and if it is
the second most important law, it is often the more difficult. Take
your final steps, Zoey.” Two steps and our feet were touching a
line of stones set in the ground to mark off this point as
precisely as possible.

I could barely hear the snick as my dad flipped the
safety on his MP5. “Anything goes the least bit funny, little girl,
just get out of here while I take care of it,” he whispered.

“You vow to honor the dead, Zoey,” Milton called out
from behind us. “Then receive from them their benediction. Let them
welcome and bless you in the only way they know how.”

I leaned forward and closed my eyes. With every inch
I tilted forward and down, my dad’s grip tightened on my shoulder
more and more. He had explained beforehand how they always made
sure the dead’s fingernails were thoroughly trimmed; a few days
previous he had been out here, yanking their arms between the bars
of the fence and cutting the nails himself. But even so, as I felt
the ghostly touches on my wounded head, all I wanted to do was
throw myself back and scream. My empty stomach seemed to tighten
even more and collapse downward to my pelvis, as though it too were
fleeing the deathly fingers.

As the touches became more palpable, however, I
relaxed slightly and let them glide and dance across my skin. There
were no claws or calluses or scabs, but only papery skin that slid
across mine, sought a purchase, slipped, and slithered back. The
fingers were urgent, restless, mechanical, but also soothing,
loving, and, most of all, pitiable. And so I willed them to be for
a few seconds, as I let them grope me. Whether it was with human
love or a hellish hunger, I knew I owed it to them and could endure
it for their sakes.

“The dead accept and honor you, Zoey,” Milton called
out behind me. “Now return to the living.” My dad pulled me back
up, and we walked back toward the torches in the clearing.

My mom hugged me tight, sobbing quietly and
whispering apologies in my ear for the cuts she’d inflicted on me.
Milton and the others congratulated me briefly, mostly silently,
with hand-shaking or pats on the back.

On the way back to the city, my mom and I huddled
together in the backseat, just holding each other. She only spoke
once on the ride, to whisper, “Your dad and I are so proud of you.
And so are your birth mom and dad.”

As Mom could so often do, she’d intuited the right
thing to say, for I had just had my only sad thought of the
evening—of all the dead behind the fence, I knew my mom and dad
were not among them; they were gone from my touch forever, and that
made them both safer and better than “regular” dead, but also far
less real. My mom was showing how she had not forgotten them, and
neither had I.

I sank into Mom’s warm body and let myself nuzzle
her. She caressed my head and neck. There was nothing to apologize
for, or congratulate, or mourn over that evening, and I realized
Milton was right—there was only a great deal to revere, and I knew
how much I revered both my sets of parents. It was another feeling
I’ve had many times before and since, but which first fully
overtook and enveloped me that night.

When the truck stopped in front of the museum, I
stepped out to perform the final denouement of the ceremony. I had
asked that Mr. Caine be my vows-father, the member of the community
who welcomed me back after my vows. He had helped me mentally
prepare in many ways for what I had just undergone, and especially
for taking in the meaning of it. Mr. Caine took my hand and led me
to an enormous pile of wood in the parking lot in front of the
museum. The petroleum smell coming off the wood was pungent and
bracing, but welcome in a way. Everyone from town had gathered,
some holding torches. Mr. Caine beamed down at me with his kind and
reassuring smile. As in class, I never liked to smile, and in front
of so many people it would’ve been unthinkable, but it was dark
enough, and his smile filled me with enough confidence that I
risked raising the corners of my mouth to acknowledge his
encouragement.

He stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders.
“Citizens of our city,” he called out. “Zoey left us with great joy
a few hours ago, and she returns with even greater joy and promise.
She has returned with all the rights and responsibilities of a
woman. She will serve and love others with all the courage and
patience and strength a human being can, in good times and in bad.
And we will continue to protect and love her as we have since the
day we were blessed to find her. She will help light our way to a
better future, as she will now light this fire.”

He took a torch from someone nearby, then offered it
to me. I instinctively reached for it with my right hand, as I had
learned to shake hands and do most polite, social things like a
right-handed person. Mr. Caine withdrew the torch and gently moved
my right hand away. “With your left hand, Zoey,” he said, softly
enough that I was sure no one else could hear. “Don’t pretend.”

As I took it with my left hand, he smiled again.

“Being a part of a community should never be denying
or hiding who you really are, Zoey, so don’t start with that kind
of a gesture.” Then he turned from me and called out louder, “The
light, Zoey, the light of this night is yours to give us.”

I touched the torch to the wood and it flared up
quickly. A cheer went up from the congregation.

Mr. Caine took the torch from me and handed it back
into the crowd. Then he stooped a little to hug me. “Don’t ever be
embarrassed of who you are, Zoey,” he whispered. “That should be
one of your vows tonight.”

He let me go, and scores of other people came up to
congratulate me, their hands reaching for me as eagerly as those of
the dead. But if anything, the hands of the dead frightened me less
than these more lively and unpredictable limbs, especially when I
saw some children my age whose parents forced them to “make nice”
with the Piano Girl on the night of her vows. Though as the
greetings wore on and the calm and honesty induced in me by Milton
and Mr. Caine took hold, I could fully embrace this night’s truth:
all my fears were ultimately unfounded. I would serve the living
and the dead, and they would let—or even help—me be happy and be
myself. And we would do this, sometimes in spite of ourselves, and
sometimes because of who we were. But as I felt the heat from the
huge bonfire, as I felt dizzy and flushed from hunger and all the
extremes I had gone through, I knew all this would always, somehow,
happen because of that ultimate object of gratitude and
vulnerability that I had intuited earlier, sitting by myself. I had
truly returned to the community a changed person; or, I had
returned to a community that had changed, so far as I was
concerned. Either way, there was an intense feeling of awe, wonder,
and vitality that night.

Finally they led me to food and drink laid out on
tables under the stars. As I ate, people became more interested in
eating and drinking, or in talking to others, or flirting, or
dancing, and little by little I was left more alone at the
periphery of the crowd, chewing and thinking. And as my stomach
filled and hurt less, the cuts on my head tingled more—not with
pain, but just with excitement and awareness. After the feast, we
went home and I slept, more full and content and alive than ever
before.

A few days later, Will returned. I could tell by the
same commotion among the other people locked in with me, though
this time the commotion did not move toward the gate, but gathered
off to the left of our little storage cubicle. I couldn’t see Will
over the other people, but I heard him shout, “Truman, take Blue
Eye to the gate while the rest of them are here!”

I took Lucy’s hand and we moved behind the others.
Almost all of them were pressed against the fence and oblivious to
us, focused only on Will, except a boy and a girl near the back of
the throng, whom we had to push past to make our way to the gate.
They growled at me, but Lucy growled back and they turned quiet and
sullen. I didn’t understand that other side of her, but I was
always so happy she showed her beautiful side to me while all the
others missed it.

After a minute of shuffling, we were at the gate. As
we waited, I looked down at Lucy. I hoped this was not a bad idea,
going out with Will. She looked up at me, and her hand squeezed
mine as she gave a low, throaty purr. I knew she approved and
wanted to go outside, too, so my fears were gone; I was doing what
she wanted, which was the only thing that mattered.

After a couple minutes, Will ran around and let us
out the gate. As he resecured it, he kept an eye on Lucy.

Will was wearing his usual protective clothing. “I
was in town for a couple days,” he said. “I had to see some people
and catch up on what’s going on there. But now, let’s go where you
want. I think I’ve seen everything around here, since I’m usually
out here every day, so you go ahead and take the lead. Why don’t
you just start walking down the road? There are a few buildings,
then it’s fields past that. Go ahead.”

We did as he suggested, walking down the cracked,
overgrown macadam, the moaning of the other people fading behind
us. I could hear birds singing, and I saw some fly by. Insects
buzzed and flew everywhere. I even saw a deer before it bounded
into some nearby trees. Lucy seemed enthralled by everything around
us. When we had walked a little ways, Will came up alongside me and
walked with us, though he still kept a little apart. I understood
it was difficult for him to be near us since we were different, and
I knew he still had to be cautious, as Lucy had attacked him
before. But I was glad to be out, and I was very grateful he’d made
the effort to help us and be nice to us.

As Will had described, the storage facility was near
other buildings, or what remained of other buildings. With so much
pavement around it to keep plants from growing, and with buildings
made of cinder blocks, brick, and aluminum, the storage facility
had survived much better than others. Most of the other nearby
buildings were made of wood, and more than half of these had
collapsed in whole or part. A few seemed to have burned down, with
dirty, cracked chimneys and skeletal, blackened spars of wood
pointing up at the sky. But even these barely diminished the
joyousness of this early summer day, as flowering vines had climbed
up most of the structures, yearning for the sun. I felt sorry for
all the people that had lived here, and I wondered what had
happened to them, but I still had to feel grateful for the beauty
all around us.

Near the end of the little group of ruined
buildings, we came to one that had been a gas station. It had
suffered much worse violence than the others. All the windows had
been smashed, and at some point the canopy that had been above the
gas pumps had collapsed. There were several burned out, wrecked
cars under the canopy and around the building. “Besides the gas,
there probably was a convenience store in there,” Will explained.
“For a few hours, that would’ve been a battlefield, with people
trying to get gas or food. But then it was all over. You all won.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, nor did I know what to make of
his tone, which seemed accusatory, sad, and resigned all at once,
as it did most of the time.