The Seventh Day (20 page)

Stormborne, the cold has come quickly over the land, and for twenty days the sun has gone away. It is as if the world has frozen. Ice, as from Lenny's freezer, seeps up from the earth before nightfall, and crystals, glistening like a sprinkling of diamond dust, cover fence and earth and tree. I like this chilled white world; it keeps the searchers from the sky, but not the wanderers from our fence.

This morning another sowman tries to climb the singing wire. It is not the same one I had taken water to, for though the land is white with ice, he is not. His hair is orange and he has much less of it than the other; his head is not so large, his swine snout more pronounced, and his eyes, I do not like his eyes – they are dark and small. His hands, poor things, are near human.

I believe him to be hungry and, as before, take him cornbread and pumpkin, a bottle of V-cola. Lenny will not allow me to still the fence's singing, so I throw the supplies over it, as I had done before with the pumpkin.

This sowman throws them back at me, hard and fast, and its aim is good. I run, for it thinks to touch the singing fence, and when it can not, it stands there screaming, throwing rocks at me and at the fence.

Lenny uses his dart gun, fearing the purple light made by the searcher's gun may kill the fence's song before it fells this beast. The sharp arrow flies true, cutting deep into the place above the heart; Lenny has a fine aim with that gun. Still the crazed thing will not run. It grows more angry as it rips the dart from its flesh then, bleeding, it gathers rocks, aiming them at Lenny until one fells him. Screaming then, it desires to finish what it began, and it takes up a length of fallen timber to use again and again against the fence.

We must cut power to the fence in order to open the gate and set the dogs free, but if we cut power, the beast will be across it. There is nothing I can do for Lenny, so I take up the light-gun and call to Pa.

We work together then. I am at the gate with the dogs, and he in the shed. He cuts the power, I free the dogs, then again the fence sings.

The dogs too work as a team, and the sowman turns his ire and his stick on them, until Lenny gains his feet and takes the gun I still hold. The beast now has been forced to the downside of Morgan Road. Lenny follows the dogs and pursues the beast until he puts a fiery end to its anger.

I have not before been so afraid, and I think of the ‘bloke' Aaron wrote of in his journal. As they had learned, not all men are trustworthy. Today I learn a worthy lesson: not all sowmen are docile.

‘You feed another one of those frekin things, girl, and you'll end up being his frekin dinner.' Lenny still bleeds from the deep cut on his brow, and breathlessly he berates me. I do not defend my actions, and I can not make the sides of his wound join either. It is as if he has a second mouth over his eyes. I press my fingers to it, hold them fast, but when I release the pressure, the red lips open.

‘Lord.' I go in search of Granny's pouch of needles, and I find them. If the city men can stitch flesh, so too can I.

It is a slow and sticky process, but I gather the sides of the wound together and with the half circle needle and the black reel thread, sew the edges, then bind Lenny's head. He makes few complaints about the pain, which must be considerable, but he makes many complaints about my indiscretion. I say not one word. But I think. And I think I will not feed another of the beasts. I will not. And I think today I was for once pleased with the fence's singing, and I think I understand why the city men built that fence. If I have seen two escaped sowmen, then there are more.

The power generator, during this sunless season, sucks strength from many batteries. Our store is low. The grey men did not come on the day the light flashed red, though for all of one day and for two nights we hid in woods and cave. I tell myself it was because there was much storming rain on the day Lenny's calculator light flashed red, but I have counted eighteen dry days since that storm and still the city men do not come.

This season is too cold to seek occupation outside; I find enough before the stove. Having found Granny's supply of needles and reel thread I am using them to fashion garments for the foetus, from worn overalls. When it comes out of me and into the chill of this season it will require warm coverings.

If –

I do not like to think beyond the if. I do not like to think much beyond the now, and I do not like this unknowing. If they will come, when will they come? Why do they not come?

Perhaps they are all dead of the plague.

The season of the last newsprint was April, which is a word I understand. Granny had that word on her calendar. I think the naming of months is of as little value as the naming of kittens – they die and are gone – but I seek out Lenny's day calculator, which flashes neither red nor yellow, though it tells me the day is Wednesday. I play with the buttons until I find a complete set of seasons. There are twelve, as with Granny's calendar. Each one has a name and 30 or 31 small squares, which enclose name days and numbers, as had the calendar Granny painted on a square of timber. Each day we had crossed off with black coal from the stove. I last saw it in her room during the final days of her living.

Since she died, I have not been to her room and have not wished to go there, though I am aware that the room should be checked for rain damage. As a child I had loved the beauty and colour of the great tapestry that hung behind her bed, and I do not wish to see it grow grey with mould.

The chill upstairs is greater than out of doors, and I shiver with cold, or apprehension, as I open her door and enter a large room. There is space for a bed, for a small table and the cedar-wood drawers and, as in my room, hers has a wardrobe. On the western wall beside the wardrobe there are likenesses in their frames, and many of them – both faces and views.

Her bed is as mine, of the larger variety, but unlike my own it is covered by the blankets of the old ones, some of which are still strong.

I had not thought much of the old ones who lie in the graveyard, not until Aaron's writings did I give one moment of thought to their daily survival here, nor had I considered how they had clothed themselves in the cold season.

I take up a blanket, a faded thing, like Pa, grown so grey it is almost white in the places where the sun reaches in to it. At its edge there is a little colour. Many of the old blankets have good colour for they were stored in the deep drawers of the cedar-wood chest. Its scent is still strong, and of Granny; all the items she wore were stored in this unit.

Some segments of her apparel remain in the first drawer; much of it was blankets or rough garments made of blankets. I find two large pins, and play with them a while, remembering them. Such things fastened my clothing before the grey men came. My feet knew no sandals, though in the cold season, when outdoors, I had worn boots like Granny and the men, which were fashioned from the hide of the cows. Lenny and Pa had worn britches made from hides, odd upper garments of many colours and always their bullock hide capes. Granny had such a cape. I had such a cape.

Had the old ones worn such clothing, or woven cloaks like the one I found in the trunk and wear today? Such warmth it has, I wonder why Granny had not worn it. I look at the weave and the colour, I study the stitching of it, which has been done with a matching brown thread, and I think the thread was made with the old spinning wheel and the fabric woven on the old loom.

Lord, how I wish I could find the writings of one who came in the generations between Aaron and Granny. There is so much I do not know. And can not know. I have searched Aaron's room, searched the books of Granny's library. Only in the Bible have I found names, written by the old ones' hands – many names, but what use are names alone? They die with their wearer.

I know Aaron was alive during the Great Ending, and I know he lived for one hundred and five years and was a very old man when Granny was born and that Granny lived on earth for one hundred and two years. I know Aaron was the grandfather of Granny's grandfather, thus there were three generations that came between them. I know where Aaron is buried but where the others sleep I do not know.

I place the blanket neatly across Granny's bed and turn to the tapestry, which is at most times protected from the sun, though it has reached in to steal the colour from one corner.

The brown rabbit is safe from it. His bright eyes still peep from behind a bush, and I think perhaps he laughs now at his pursuers, for soon he will have no more need to fear those fading hounds with their slavering jaws. Today they run in from a greying corner as if striving to escape the sun's sting.

The owl, perched high in his tree, has lived strong. Safe from sun and hounds he looks like a feathered old god, unmoved by the scene below.

As a child I had sat on this bed, playing with pearls from the oceans, and with rings, their colourful gems dug from beneath the earth. How Granny had loved to finger them, the bright gold and jewels making a mockery of her poor clawed hands as she had spoken to me of each piece.

‘That's old gold, girl, Morgan gold. In times more distant than old Aaron could recall, three thousand people lived on this hill, trading their gold for supplies. See this bracelet, girl? Old Aaron once told me it was forged from a lump of gold picked up in our creek by his great great grandmother.

A great great grandmother? It was then, and is now, too difficult, too distanced for my mind to comprehend – as is a community of three thousand males and females. So many? How could there be food enough for so many? It is impossible to think such numbers, and across such a distance of time, and I shake my head as I fit a ring to my finger. It is too large. I place the bracelet over my hand, but it weighs heavy. Such useless things they are. I do not want to deck myself with them, nor want to be in this room. I drop Granny's treasures back into their wooden box and leave the tapestry on the wall. The room is dry, the ceiling intact. The rabbit will remain safe beneath the bushes.

I search the floor then, search each drawer of her cedar-wood chest for the calendar but find only blankets that smell of the drawer and four small rough brown garments Granny had worn against her skin in the cold seasons.

Strange, formless fabric it is, and certainly not woven on her loom. It is as the weave of the colourful upper garments the men had worn, as if woven from one continuous thread, for when I find an end and pull it, break it, it cuts the garment near in two. Quickly I place it back in the drawer, for I hear her words in my head.

Waste not, want not, girl.

As I move then to leave the room, I glance again at the aged photographs which hang beside her wardrobe. One is there of this house when it was young and loved. A male stands before it, an infant in his arms. I have seen it many times, and think again how strange the clothing these people wore. There is a likeness, too, of a female who wears a golden garment. Her face has been captured by one she loves well for there is love in her red-lipped smile.

I glance at the others, familiar since childhood. Granny once told me of their names, but I have forgotten which face fits each name – until I see the likeness of a young one with corn yellow hair and cheeky blue eyes.

‘That's my grandfather's grandfather, girl,' she had said, her finger pointing to the child. And how foolish her words had sounded to me that day, for the likeness was of a very young male who had appeared to be no older than I – at that time. ‘That's old Aaron Morgan himself,' she had said. I had discounted this likeness and her words.

Today I do not discount her words. This is my Aaron, the writer. Suddenly, time, which has previously been too large for my comprehension, becomes smaller, and easily within my grasp. I know that my small Aaron grew to be an old, old man. And I know Granny's age. The two together make two hundred years. So . . . so, that is near the time which has passed since the Great Ending.

‘I have read your words,' I say to Aaron Morgan, my fingers reaching out to touch the dusty glass that keeps his image safe. ‘I know you did not much like rice, which Granny's dictionary tells me was the seed of a grass plant that grew in water and fed much of the old world – so it was not poison.'

His cheeky eyes look at me, and I think his smile grows wider.

Some photographs are missing from their frames. Some have long fallen. There are many hooks waiting lonely here with only the grey thread of spider webs to support the non-faded squares of wallpaper in this gallery of loss.

I walk back to the Aaron child, and smile at his smile. This child does not yet know that his fine safe world will die. How could he smile so if he knew? He does not know that one of his blood will die faceless, her clawed hands striving to cover that facelessness as she left the living to meet again with her people.

‘I know you well, my Aaron child,' I say to him. ‘And I know that the sun returned to shine upon your face, and you lost your fear and you lived to be one hundred years and five more, and if you had found paper enough, you would have written your thousand page king story and found a fine end for it where you smiled and played again, and where you held the hand of the small Moni child and walked with her and talked with her. And she lived to touch my hand and walk with me, and one of her blood has implanted a foetus within me. See. You continue, and you are not so distanced from me.'

Then I hear him. I swear I hear his laughter coming from the burned rooms. Such a merry sound it is. He has heard my words, and in that other time, he rushes to tell his people.

We will live. We will live.

I steal his photograph from the wall, and the one of the male and infant. Then the red-lipped smiler appears lonely, so I steal her too and I close the door, leaving Granny's ghost to sleep in peace or to finger her jewellery in the night.

The photographs are placed safe within the cover of Aaron's journal, and as I do this I see that he has written the month names on many pages. So I sit again and read them, copying his months onto the first page of the Book of Moni. Aaron's November is surely the city men's Nov. His December and Christmas, their Dec. Their June is as Aaron's.