Lost Everything (24 page)

“Are you sick?”

Sunny Jim turned. The boy from the camp.

“No. Just very tired.”

“Why? It’s morning.”

Sunny Jim smiled at that. “Yes. But too early in the morning.”

“My dad told me once that the water reflects the color of the sky.”

“He did?”

“Yes. He said that the water was blue because the sky was blue.”

“That sounds right.”

“And it’s gray when the sky is gray.”

“That’s true.”

“But then why is the water gray when the sky is black?”

“I don’t know,” Sunny Jim said. “There must be light in the sky, even if we can’t see it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” the boy said.

Sunny Jim laughed, four short chuckles. The first time, he realized, since Aaron had left. “It doesn’t, does it?”

“No. Because I see lights in the sky all the time.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He pointed. “Right now.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Right there. And there. And there, too.”

“Oh, now I see it,” Sunny Jim lied. “It’s pretty, isn’t it.”

“It’s not pretty,” the boy said. “It scares me.”

“…”

“I miss my dad.”

“Well, I miss my boy,” Sunny Jim said. He reached over, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, let it rest there. The boy did not flinch, curled his fingers around Sunny Jim’s wrist. For a few seconds, they both felt it, their twin hurts finding a mate, and it lifted them up, them and the ship all around them, until the
Carthage
was rising above the river, throwing ropes of water back into the current. The Susquehanna was a ribbon of darkness unfurling itself across the Pennsylvania landscape, the hills, the first ripples of mountains, all bleached by the moon. Then they were through the clouds and they could see it all, a long wavering line to the north and west of them, a slow wave of darkness sparked by lightning, breaking across the earth. It was almost to Lisle, it had covered the towns that lay just north of the house already, and they could not see what lay beyond it. Without warning, Sunny Jim was crying again, a little. The boy pulled away, and they were back on the river, standing at the rail while the
Carthage
drew its wake in the current. They nodded to each other, as if to mark what they had seen, confirm what had passed between them, and then the boy left Sunny Jim, went to sleep in the first mate’s arms. Sunny Jim was awake to see the dawn.

*   *   *

FOR A FEW MILES,
high red cliffs to starboard, a slack beach of white stones to port. A stalled car rusting on the shore, the door on the driver’s side open and falling off the hinges, the seats pooled with water. Gnats swarmed inside, two snakes curled in the passenger-side foot well. From Upper Exeter to Osterhout to Tunkhannock, they saw no one. Dogs and chickens strutting in the roads. A troop of monkeys colonizing a rooftop, the leader clambering to the top of the chimney. Garages open, patrolled by feral cats. Front yards littered with cardboard boxes, sagging suitcases, picture frames, instrument cases. The things people decided, when it was time at last to choose, that they could live without. Then the valley widened and the river flooded into the farmland, became a plain of water divided by lines of trees where the underwater fields began and ended. The clouds thinned and the sun broke through for the first time since Harrisburg, and in the miles of water before Towanda, it was as if they were harvesting light. Everyone came out on deck to see it, tilted their faces sunward, smiling, threw out their arms. They could not help themselves. The revelers were bringing up their bags, multicolored canvases, painted wood, circular hat boxes lined with fur. They were milling about, kissing everyone. So wonderful to be with you, so wonderful to meet you, they said, and they meant it. The valley rose again and the plain diminished, the ship rounded the bend to Towanda, and Faisal Jenkins blinked. Once the river had washed away the bridge, but the people of Towanda had rebuilt it, made it into a drawbridge, a contraption of felled trees, steel beams, a metal grate. There was a blast from a horn, low and nasal, when the townspeople saw the
Carthage
coming, and the drawbridge rose, shuddering but secure, to let them through. Then there was the waterfront, the line of brick buildings, the cluster of roofs. The octagonal green dome of a church. Boats in the water, ferries and fisherman, riding the high current. Voices calling across it. To all but the revelers, it seemed a hallucination, a delusion. No holes in attics, no rows of shattered windows. No funeral lines or bells tolling. Only the death wrought by years and weather, the kind that sweetens the time we have once we become aware of it.

The horns at the drawbridge sounded again, answered by more from the shore. People emerged from streets and alleys to mass at the town pier. The revelers clamored at the
Carthage
’s rail, shouting out names and waving. The captain could see already how it would be. As soon as the gangway was lowered, bodies would surge together, commingle on the pier in kisses and laughing. I’m so glad you made it. I’m so glad you’re here.

The man with the green beard was on the deck, herding people, livestock, birds down to the pier. Captain Mendoza stood behind him, let him finish a chain of instructions, greetings, embraces, then took him aside. She could not contain her amazement.

“You told me it would be good,” she said. “I had no idea it would be like this.”

“Do you see now?” he said. “What’s coming? We’re not afraid of it here. When it sweeps over us, there will be no pain, and what’s on the other side will be marvelous. So we’re preparing for it, with food, with drink, with festivities.”

“But how can you believe that?”

“Because we don’t want to live any other way.” He came in closer, softened his voice. “What’s coming doesn’t matter, see? It’s how what we believe makes us live our lives now.”

“…”

“You could join us, you know.”

She could see it when he said it. They could tie the
Carthage
to the pier with chains, take it apart for the wood, the metal, build the foundations for the new city that was coming. There would be weeks of joyful anticipation, of gathering grains and pressing grapes, taking instruments from their cases. Dances in the streets that began slow, as the sun went down, and ended in a mad whirl of shouting and stamping, then a long sleep until noon. And when the edge of the storm passed over them and away, they would find each other and this world, grayed with war and weather, transformed in a swarm of color, everything that was and would be revealed to them at once. They would see the plan before them, drawn from the lines of the past and crackling with ecstatic shock, the final moment and the beginning that followed, the ragged ends of joy and sorrow, transcendence and dissolution, fused together, so that it no longer mattered which was which.

But she had people to take north, a duty to them, promises she’d made. There was her ship all around her, the crew skittering over the hull, spiders who never slept. The last years of her life, the history of the river, were all bound together in the ship’s wood and glass. The people who came aboard and left, the parts of them that stayed forever, the spirits she brought back with her every time she saved a scrap of the world from destruction, were all talking to her all the time. She could not understand what she was, why she was here, without them.

“Do you want to come with us?” the man with the green beard said.

“I’m already there,” the captain said.

The man with the green beard nodded, looked toward the shore. “We’ll miss you,” he said.

“See you soon,” the captain said.

I love you.

I love you, too.

The musicians saw them off with a triumphant Dixieland number, hot stepping and hollering. It was the happiest stuff the captain ever heard them play. It was music made of laughter, the clarinet giggling and wheezing, the guffaws of the tuba, the chuckling accordion, everyone working too hard to catch their breaths. They were saying good-bye, pulling everything they could out of the minutes they had before their best audience was gone. Already, they could hear more music, rising in chorus from the shore, among the brick buildings, the ornate towers, the narrow streets. For the rumors were saying there were only a few days left, a week at most. There was no more need for labor, for hardship. Only time for the things they always wanted to do, the words they always wanted to say. When it came for them, they would turn their faces to it, smile, and open their arms wide. As they were doing for one another now.

As the
Carthage
rounded the next bend in the river and left Towanda behind, Sergeant Foote and the con artist looked across the flooded valley, the tips of rooftops peeking from the waves, colonized by cranes, and each of them wondered why they had not left the ship, joined the parade to shore. Lost the mission and the manipulation in the teeming crowd. After all that they had seen, they wanted to believe. But they did not know how to talk to each other about it.

But the man with the viola, the one from Clarks Ferry Bridge, talked to me. He had been on the
Carthage
the whole time
,
from Millersburg to the camp to the attack at Sunbury, the fires at Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. He had seen what the storm wrought, what it was doing to everyone around him, and threw in his lot with the revelers. Got off the
Carthage
with them at Towanda. And he was there when the Big One came. It was like a vertical ocean, he said. The rain and lightning first seething in the sky, a few miles off, then falling over everything, the houses and cars, the brick buildings and churches, the dome, the courthouse. The rumble escalating into a roar. The party was huge by then, it was in the shops and the streets, in the basements and on the rooftops. And over the music and pounding feet a raging cheer tore from every throat, of thrill or panic, the man could not say. It was defiance. It was a prayer. They turned toward the wind and opened their eyes as the wave of rain swept over them, and some of them saw something in the storm, something beyond it, a lifting up, a deliverance. They were already going, part of them was already there. But all the man with the viola saw was the darkness, the lightning, and he thought of his sister, of the land farther south. He tucked the viola case under his arm and ran through the streets as the lightning chased him, found a car someone had left running and pointed it south, hit the gas until the rain stopped. Then he got out and looked back. There was no sign of Towanda, or land, or river. Only the storm was there, all the water and electricity in the world moving in on him. He thought of all those people back there, with envy and with dread, and kept driving. I still haven’t found my sister, he told me later. I’m still looking.

*   *   *

THAT NIGHT REVEREND BAUXITE
was up, insomniac, witness to the ship’s every creak and groan. How imperfect the vessel was. How ready it was to stop sailing. It was just waiting for something to break against. Something was coming for him, too, climbing out of the water. He could almost hear it, a gathering of voices, rushing forward. The roar of his church collapsing, the screams of those inside. He moved through the hallway, was halfway up the stairs to the deck when he closed his eyes, turned around. Was not surprised at what he saw when he opened them again.

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said.

“They came in so quiet, the bombs,” Talia said. “I didn’t hear anything. I was praying. Then I was on fire. Now I’m here. I have news for you.”

“What’s that.”

“I saw everything that is going to happen to you. Everything that’s already happened to you on this ship. I saw it all, months before the war even started, and never told you. Should I have told you?”

“What would I have done with it?”

“That’s why I never said anything. Forgive me, Father. There’s still a place for our own desires and dreams in the plan, isn’t there? I didn’t know what you would do. And still don’t, even with the news I have for you now.”

“What do you want to say?”

“You won’t live much longer,” Talia said. “I mean, within three days.”

“Will I see Aaron first?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

“…”

“…”

“Are you angry?” Talia said.

“No. I don’t have any more time to be angry.”

“…”

“I just wish I had more time.”

“I understand,” Talia said. Then pointed up, toward the open door at the top of the stairs that framed the night sky. “The rumors about the storm are true. Yes, they are.”

Clouds ripped across the sky. Beyond them, it was brighter. No, darker. No. He did not know. A rushing in Reverend Bauxite’s ears. Something coming for him.

“Is that it?” Reverend Bauxite said.

“What gets you? No. Your death is much more mundane.”

“…”

“I’m sorry,” Talia said.

“Don’t be. You’re only telling the truth.”

The sound from the sky was already getting louder. The screams of multitudes from far away. Begging him to join them, though Reverend Bauxite did not want to go. Not yet. So he went back down to the cabin, where Sunny Jim was lying on his stomach on the floor. He shifted when Reverend Bauxite opened the door, sleep leaving him, too.

“Jim.”

“What.”

“We need to talk.”

“Is everything all right?”

“It will be, I think,” Reverend Bauxite said. “I just need to tell you some things.”

He did not begin at the beginning. There was no need. For Reverend Bauxite, the things that mattered about his life, the things he wanted Aaron to know, were clear notes, as from chimes, sounding through white noise. The conditions of his epiphany, the way the door had opened in the trees. Being ordained on the banks of the river, the veins in the bishop’s hands, the hitches in his voice. Talia, all his parishioners, and all he learned from them. How he thought he could hear God’s voice the most in the hum of their everyday lives, the miracle of creation shown to him in glimpses and glimmers, the cracks between the smallest acts, fragments of imperfect glory. He was in awe that people could be so good, and through the fall of his church and the atrocities that followed, he kept that tiny revelation safe. He was sure, he told Sunny Jim, that believing it allowed him to see it, pull it out of others, and if he could give one thing to Aaron, it would be that. The ability to cast a circle, to build a house and gather friends, wherever he went.