Drought

by Pam Bachorz

  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.

  My rage softens, a little. He was doing a decent thing, marking her grave with flowers—and telling me where to find it. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s chosen a terrible path, being an Overseer.

  But the flowers are beautiful … a single petal couldn’t hurt. I tug it away from the flower and lift it to my nose, then tuck it in the waist of my dress. It’s softer than anything else that’s ever touched my skin.

  Chapter 14

  Tonight there’s only a sliver of moon. I walk to the cistern, slow, my feet a little uncertain after so lo
ng away. Every night brought a reason to stay away.

  But no reason is enough, anymore … not since he told me where Ellie rests.

  I see Ford’s shadow before I hear him, a darkness that doesn’t belong under the cisterns.

  I walk to him, slowly, pushing away the flutters I feel every time I see him. He’s given me no reason to fear him, I remind myself.

  No reason except being an Overseer.

  Ford doesn’t stand. I get close enough that I can see he’s wearing a trim white shirt with short sleeves and pants so dark that I can’t see his legs in the grass.

  “It’s been lonely,” he says.

  “I knew I shouldn’t see you again.”

  “Huh.” He pats the grass near him, then slides away a bit, as if making room. “What if you talk but you don’t look at me?”

  “What?” I ask, confused.

  “You said you can’t see me. But you didn’t say anything about not talking to me.”

  I can’t help smiling. But I know I shouldn’t talk, see, listen, think of, touch … the last word makes me shiver.

  “No. I should really …” I glance up at the cisterns.

  “Just for a little. Then you can pray. Please?” he asks, patting the grass again.

  I am tired from a long day of gathering, then digging. Again there was no supper. Couldn’t I sit, if only for a few minutes?

  And don’t I owe him something for pointing me to Ellie? Isn’t that what made me return, finally, to the cisterns?

  So I sit, closer than I probably should … much closer than the last time we talked here.

  “Thank you for telling me where Ellie is,” I say.

  “I’m real sorry she died.”

  “I know.”

  “They made us check the cabin. I didn’t want to,” he tells me.

  “I went to her grave right after you gave me the note.” I brush my fingers over the tips of the lush grass. It’s damp, so different from the yellowed field that Ellie lies in.

  “I thought maybe you’d want a funeral,” Ford says.

  “I can’t tell anyone. They’d wonder … how. How I knew.” Shame wells in me, and I stare at the ground.

  “I guess that’s better for both of us,” Ford says.

  “It would be better if we stopped … this.” My chest feels tight, with barely any room for air.

  “You can leave if you want to,” he says.

  But I slide closer, just a bit closer, to him. And he slides a little closer to me.

  “You brought Ellie flowers,” I say.

  “That’s what you do when people die … people you like.”

  “I never smelled anything like them.” The petal didn’t last forever, tucked in my dress. So I pressed it beneath a rock, by our cabin door. Maybe soon I’ll bring it inside and hide it under my mattress.

  “Ellie seemed like the type that’d like roses—I think.” Ford clears his throat.

  “Is that what they’re called? Roses?”

  Ford laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I forget … I forget how things are up here, sometimes.”

  How can he forget? I can’t forget for a second, not ever.

  I glance up at the cisterns. I haven’t climbed up there tonight. Before I leave, I have to add my blood. It’s been far too long.

  “Do you stay here all night?” I ask.

  “Mostly. Sometimes I sneak back and catch some sleep if I know Darwin’s gone for the night.”

  “He leaves? Where does he go?”

  “Darwin’s got a whole other house off the mountain, a real nice one with a huge backyard and an in-ground swimming pool,” Ford tells me. “You didn’t know?”

  It would be our house, I suppose, if Mother ever promised to love him.

  “What’s a swimming pool?” I ask.

  “It’s … Really? Really, you don’t know?” Ford inches closer to me, as if to get a better look at my face.

  I turn my face so we’re gazing at each other, straight on. “There’s a lot I don’t know about,” I tell him. “Most things in the modern world, I don’t know.”

  “It’s like your lake, here. Only it’s much, much smaller. And people build them. They’re not natural.”

  “He made his own lake?”

  “With a fountain and everything. The guys say he has a party there every summer—a picnic for all their families. He treats their families real well.”

  As soon as he says it, Ford ducks his head and stares at his feet.

  “Real well, huh?” I look up again at the cisterns. Our Water pays for that house, and that swimming pool, and takes care of all those other families.

  “It’s the best job in town,” Ford says softly. “Not even the jobs in Albany pay like it. Especially if you haven’t gone to college.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  He lifts his head to look at the cisterns, then me. “I know.”

  “I need to … I have to go soon.” I will myself not to look up at the cistern but he taps it with his knuckles.

  “Do you have to … um, pray?”

  “Yes.” I stand up fast and hope he doesn’t follow.

  For a moment, it looks like he’ll get up. But then he settles back on his hands and looks in the other direction. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

  I won’t need him. I can’t ever let myself need him.

  My feet make a soft clank-clank-clank on the metal steps to the top of the cistern. I roll my sleeve back and hold the knife over my arm.

  What would he think if he knew what I was really doing up here?

  “Praise Otto,” I say, loud enough for him to hear. “Bless this Water.”

  I make a quick slash with the rock, and my blood flows. It hurts more than usual tonight—I don’t know why—and I let out a small gasp.

  “Are you all right?” Ford asks. I hear rustling. Is he getting up?

  “I’m fine. I just bumped my … finger. I’m fine,” I say quickly.

  He doesn’t answer. I count the drops into the cistern—twenty, today, to make up for the time I’ve stayed away. Near the end I have to squeeze my arm; the blood doesn’t want to leave my body tonight.

  As soon as I can, I wrap my cut in a handkerchief and hurry down the ladder.

  There is Ford’s shadow, under a cistern. I want to go sit next to him and talk more. I want to do bold things … touch him, even. What would it feel like, the brush of his skin against mine?

  But it’s wrong and dangerous. “Good night, Ford,” I say softly.

  “Wait!” He stands up too fast and knocks his head, hard, on the cistern.

  “Are you … Are you all right?” I ask.

  He grips his head and staggers a step sideway. “Fine,” he grunts.

  “You don’t seem fine.” I go closer, and closer, and then I am reaching up to touch the part of his head that he bumped. The short bristles of his hair are soft, not the hard spikes I imagined. I run my fingers once, twice, over them before I realize what I am doing.

  I drop my hand fast. “It doesn’t seem to be bleeding.”

  “I’m too hardheaded for that.” He is smiling, I can tell, even though it’s so dark in the shadows that I can’t see much of his face.

  We are so close that I can smell him: a clean, soapy smell. And there’s something else too; a familiar tang, like woodsmoke.

  “Stay awhile,” he says. “I like talking to you.”

  “You’re an Overseer. And it’s late … and …”

  “It’s not an Overseer asking. It’s just me.”

  And then he reaches out and takes my hand, gently, slowly. First only our fingertips touch, and then his skin slides against mine until our hands are knitted together.

  Mother used to take my hand when I was smaller, tugging me here and there. Sometimes it was a sweeter touch at the end of a long day, or when we sat in front of the fire. But it never felt like this.

  Heat travels from my finger
tips, up my arm, until I feel like my body is made of embers.

  “I’ll stay,” I say.

  “Good.” He bends his knees to sit. I follow, even though worry and shame squeeze my heart. I edge away a bit to make sure only our hands touch.

  He still holds my hand—I still hold his—but his other hand strays up to his neck. I see the glint of the gold that he wears on the chain there.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “What?” Ford looks over at me, then follows my eyes to his hand.

  “You touch that necklace a lot,” I say.

  “Oh … I do?” He lets out an embarrassed laugh and his hand falls to the grass. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You don’t wear other jewelry,” I say. Some of the other Overseers do: bracelets like small chains around their wrists, or big rings that cut cruelly, if they punch or slap a Congregant.

  “It’s a medal, really. I wouldn’t say that it’s jewelry. My mother …” He draws in a deep, shaky breath.

  I don’t push him. I close my eyes and listen to the wind in the trees. It’s a little cooler at night, these days. Soon it will be darker earlier. Will Darwin lessen our quotas?

  Our fingers drift apart. I feel cold without Ford’s touch, but I don’t reach out for him.

  “It used to hang from my mother’s rearview mirror, in her car.” Ford slides his hands away from me and runs them over his head, tilting his head back to look at the sky. “It’s a picture of Saint Jude. He helps desperate people.”

  I wonder if Saint Jude knows Otto. Has he told him what’s happened to us?

  “How does he do that?” I ask.

  “Well … you pray. He’s supposed to take your prayers to God and sort of …” Ford waves one hand in the air. “He convinces God to listen to them. That’s what saints do.”

  “Maybe we need a saint to talk to Otto,” I say. I mean it as a joke, but then I wonder: is that why Otto doesn’t listen? Do we need someone to remind him of us, to convince him our prayers are worth granting?

  What if I’m supposed to be that person? An idea starts to tick in my mind, something too small to name—yet.

  Ford’s hand goes to his neck again. “Otto isn’t God, Ruby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I went to Sunday school for eight years. Nobody ever talked about Otto.”