“Where I was born?”
Peter nodded. “That’s right. There was something special about it. It was like we would always be safe there, like something was looking after us.” He regarded the boy for a moment. “Your father thought it was a ghost, you know.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years. Maybe it was. Or at least a kind of ghost. Maybe places have memories, too.” He rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “All I know is that the world wanted you to be born, Caleb.”
The boy fell silent. Then, his face blooming with the mischievous grin of a plan unveiled: “You know what I want to do next?”
“Name it.”
“I want to go swimming.”
It was a little after four by the time they reached the base of the spillway. Standing by the edge of the pool, they stripped to their shorts. As Peter stepped out onto the rocks, he turned to find Caleb frozen at the edge.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know how.”
Somehow Peter had failed to foresee this. He offered the boy his hand. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”
The water was startlingly cold, with a distinct mineral taste. Caleb was fearful at first, but after thirty minutes of splashing around, his confidence grew. Another ten and he was moving freely on his own, dog-paddling across the surface.
“Look at me! Look at me!”
Peter had never seen the boy so happy. “Hold on to my back,” he said.
The boy climbed aboard, gripping Peter by the shoulders. “What are we going to do?”
“Just take a deep breath and hold it.”
Together they descended. Peter blew the air from his lungs, stretched out his arms, and with a whip kick sent them gliding along the stony bottom, the boy clutching him tightly, his body pulled like a cape. The water was as clear as glass. Memories of splashing in the grotto as a boy filled Peter’s mind. He had done the same thing with his father.
Three more kicks and they ascended, bursting into the light. “How was that?” Peter asked.
“I saw fish!”
“I told you.”
Again and again they dove this way, the boy’s pleasure inexhaustible. It was past five-thirty, the shadows lengthening, when Peter declared an end. They stepped gingerly onto the rocks and dressed.
“I can’t wait to tell Sister Peg we went outside,” Caleb said, beaming.
“It’s probably best if you don’t. Let’s keep that between us, okay?”
“A secret?” The boy spoke the word with illicit pleasure; they were part of a conspiracy now.
“Exactly.”
The boy slid his small, moist hand into Peter’s as they made their way to the hydro gate. In another few minutes, the horn would sound. The feeling came upon him in a rush of love: This is why I’m here.
He found her in the kitchen, standing before a massive stove covered with boiling pots. The room roared with heat and noise—the clatter of dishes, sisters racing to and fro, the accumulating racket of excited voices as the children gathered in the dining hall. Amy’s back was to him. Her hair, iridescent and dark, descended in a thick braid to her waist. He hesitated in the doorway, observing her. She appeared totally absorbed in her work, stirring the contents of the nearest pot with a long wooden spoon, tasting and correcting with salt, then nimbly stepping to one of the room’s several red-brick ovens to withdraw, on a long paddle, half a dozen loaves of freshly risen bread.
“Amy.”
She turned, breaking into a smile. They met in the middle of the busy room. A moment of uncertainty, then they embraced.
“Sister Peg told me you were here.”
He stepped back. He had sensed it in her touch: there was something new about her. Long departed was the voiceless, traumatized waif with the matted hair and scavenged clothes. The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life. And always the paradox: the person standing before him, though to all appearances a young teenager, was in reality the oldest human being on earth. Peter’s long absence, an era to Caleb, was for Amy the blink of an eye.
“How long can you stay?” Her eyes did not move from his face.
“Just tonight. I ship out tomorrow.”
“Amy,” one of the sisters called from the stove, “is this soup ready? They’re getting loud out there.”
Amy spoke briskly over her shoulder: “Just a second.” Then, to Peter, her smile widening: “It turns out I’m not such a bad cook. Save me a place.” She quickly squeezed his hand. “It really is so good to see you.”
Peter made his way to the dining hall, where all the children had gathered at long tables, sorting themselves by age. The noise in the room was intense, a free-flowing energy of bodies and voices like the din of some immense engine. He took a place on the end of a bench beside Caleb just as Sister Peg appeared at the front of the room and clapped her hands.
The effect was like a lightning bolt: silence tensed the room. The children joined hands and bowed their heads. Peter found himself joined in the circle, Caleb on one side, on the other a little girl with brown hair who was seated across from him.
“Heavenly Father,” the woman intoned, her eyes closed, “we thank you for this meal and our togetherness and the blessing of your love and care, which you bestow upon us in your mercy. We thank you for the richness of the earth and the heavens above and your protection until we meet in the life to come. And lastly we thank you for the company of our special guest, one of your brave soldiers, who has traveled a perilous distance to be with us tonight. We pray that you will keep him, and his fellows, safe on their journeys. Amen.”
A chorus of voices: “Amen.”
Peter felt genuinely touched. So, perhaps Sister Peg didn’t mind his presence so much after all. The food appeared: vats of soup, bread cut into thick, steaming slices, pitchers of water and milk. At the head of each table, one of the sisters ladled the soup into bowls and passed them down the line as the pitchers made their way around. Amy slid onto the bench beside Peter.
“Let me know what you think of the soup,” she said.
It was delicious—the best thing he’d eaten in months. The bread, pillowy and warm in his mouth, nearly made him moan. He silenced the urge to ask for seconds, thinking it would be rude, but the moment his bowl was empty one of the sisters appeared with another, placing it before him.
“It’s not often we have company,” she explained, her face rosy with embarrassment, and scurried away.
They talked of the orphanage and Amy’s duties—the kitchen, but also teaching the youngest children to read and, in her words, “whatever else needs to be done”—and Peter’s news of the others, though they phrased this information in a general way; it wouldn’t be until after the children had gone to bed that the two of them would be able to talk in earnest. Beside him, Caleb was engaged with another boy in a vigorous conversation that Peter was only passingly able to follow, something about knights and queens and pawns. When his companion left the table, Peter asked Caleb what it was all about.
“It’s chess.”
“Chest?”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “No, chess. It’s a game. I can teach you if you want.”
Peter glanced at Amy, who laughed. “You’ll lose,” she said.
After dinner and dishes, the three of them went to the common room, where Caleb set up the board and explained the names of the various pieces and the moves they could make. By the time he got to the knights, Peter’s head was spinning.
“You really can keep all this straight in your mind? How long did it take you to learn to play?”
He shrugged innocently. “Not long. It’s pretty simple.”
“It doesn’t sound simple.” He turned to Amy, who was wearing a cagey smile.
“Don’t look at me,” she protested. “You’re on your o
wn.”
Caleb waved over the board. “You can go first.”
The battle commenced. Peter had considered taking it easy on the boy—it was, after all, a children’s game, and no doubt he would quickly get the hang of it—but he instantly discovered how badly he had underestimated his young opponent. Caleb seemed to anticipate his every tactic, responding without hesitation, his moves crisp and assured. In growing desperation Peter decided to attack, using his knight to take one of Caleb’s bishops.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” the boy asked.
“Um, no?”
Caleb was studying the board with his chin resting on his hands. Peter could sense the complex movements of his thoughts: he was assembling a strategy, imagining a series of moves and countermoves projected forward in time. Five years old, Peter thought. Amazing.
Caleb advanced a rook three spaces, taking Peter’s other knight, which he had inadvertently left open. “Watch,” he said.
A quick exchange of pieces and Peter’s king was boxed in. “Checkmate,” the boy declared.
Peter stared hopelessly at the board. “How did you do that so fast?”
Beside him, Amy laughed—a warm, infectious sound. “I told you.”
Caleb’s grin stretched a mile wide. Peter understood what had happened; first the swimming, now this. His nephew had effortlessly turned the tables on him, showing Peter what he was capable of.
“You just have to think ahead,” Caleb said. “Try to see it like a story.”
“Tell me the truth. How good are you at this?”
Caleb gave a modest shrug. “A few of the older kids used to beat me. But not anymore.”
“Is that so? Well, set it up again, youngster. I want my revenge.”
Caleb had racked up his third straight victory, each more mercilessly decisive than the last, when the bell sounded, summoning him to the dormitory. The time had passed too quickly. Amy departed for the girls’ quarters, leaving Peter to escort the boy to bed. In the large room of cots, Caleb exchanged his clothing for a nightshirt, then knelt on the stone floor at the side of his bed, hands pressed together, to say his prayers, a long series of “God bless”es that began with “my parents in heaven” and concluded with Peter himself.
“I always save you for last,” the boy said, “to keep you safe.”
“Who’s Mouser?”
Mouser was their cat. Peter had seen the poor creature lounging on a windowsill in the common room—a pitiful rag of a thing, flesh drooping over his brittle old bones like laundry on a line. Peter drew the blanket up to Caleb’s chin and bent to kiss him on the forehead. Sisters were moving up and down the lines of cots, shushing the other children. The room’s lights had already been extinguished.
“When are you coming back, Uncle Peter?”
“I’m not sure. Soon, I hope.”
“Can we go swimming again?”
A warm feeling spread through his entire body. “Only if you promise we can play more chess. I don’t think I have the hang of it yet. I could use a few pointers.”
The boy beamed. “I promise.”
Amy was waiting for him in the empty common room, the cat nosing around her feet. He had to report to the barracks at 2100; he and Amy would have only a few minutes together.
“That poor thing,” Peter said. “Why doesn’t anybody put him down? It seems cruel.”
Amy ran a hand along the animal’s spine. A faint purr trembled from him as he arched his back to receive her touch. “It’s past time, I suppose. But the children adore him, and the sisters don’t believe in it. Only God can take a life.”
“They’ve obviously never been to New Mexico.”
A joke, but not entirely. Amy regarded him with concern. “You look troubled, Peter.”
“Things aren’t going very well. Do you want to know about it?”
She considered the question. She seemed a little pale; Peter wondered if she was feeling all right.
“Maybe some other time.” Her eyes searched his face. “He loves you, you know. He talks about you all the time.”
“You’re making me feel guilty. Probably I deserve it.”
She lifted Mouser to settle him on her lap. “He understands. I’m only telling you so you know how important you are to him.”
“What about you? Are you doing okay here?”
She nodded. “On the whole, it suits me. I like the company, the children, the sisters. And of course there’s Caleb. Maybe for the first time in my life I actually feel … I don’t know. Useful. It’s nice to be just an ordinary person.”
Peter was struck by the frank, easy flow of the conversation. Some barrier between them had dropped. “Do the other sisters know? Besides Sister Peg, I mean.”
“A few do, or maybe just suspect. I’ve been here for five years, and they’d have to notice I’m not aging. I think I’m a bit of a wrinkle to Sister Peg, something that doesn’t really fit her view of things. But she doesn’t say anything about it to me.” Amy smiled. “After all, I make a mean barley soup.”
Too quickly, the moment of his departure was at hand. Amy walked him to the entrance, where Peter pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and held it out to her.
“Give this to Sister Peg, all right?”
Amy nodded without comment and slid the scrip into the pocket of her skirt. Once again she pulled him into a hug, more forcefully this time. “I really have missed you.” Her voice was soft against his chest. “Be safe, all right? Promise you’ll do that.”
There was something fraught in her insistence, a feeling, almost, of finality, a graver parting. What wasn’t she saying? And something else: her body was giving off a feverish heat. He could actually feel it pulsing through the heavy fabric of his uniform.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“I mean it, Peter. If anything happened, I couldn’t …” Her voice trailed away, as if pulled to the currents of a hidden wind. “I just couldn’t is all.”
Now he was certain: there was something Amy wasn’t telling him. Peter searched her face for what it was. A faint glaze of perspiration shone on her brow.
“Are you okay?”
Taking his hand in her own, she lifted them in concert, pressing her palm against his so that the pads of their fingers were just touching. It seemed a gesture with equal measures of togetherness and parting, connection and separation.
“Do you remember when I kissed you?”
They had never spoken of this—her quick, birdlike peck at the mall, the virals streaming toward them. Much had happened, but Peter had not forgotten. How could he?
“I always wondered about that,” he confessed.
Their raised hands seemed to hover in the darkened space between them. Amy studied them with her eyes. It was as if she were attempting to divine a meaning she herself had made. “I’d been alone so long. It’s nothing I can even describe. But all of a sudden, there you were. I couldn’t believe it.” Then, as if jarred from a trance, she withdrew her hand, her face suddenly flustered. “That’s all. You better go—you’ll be late.”
He didn’t want to. Like the kiss, the feeling of her hand seemed to possess a unique power to linger in his senses, as if it had taken up a permanent residence in his fingertips. He wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words, and the moment slipped away.
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
Her face assembled a smile. “Never better.”
She really did look ill, he thought. “Well, I’ll be back in ten days.”
Amy said nothing.
“I’ll see you then, right?” He wondered why he was asking this.
“Of course, Peter. Where would I go?”
After Peter had left, Amy made her way to the sisters’ residence, a smaller version of the dormitories where the children slept. The other sisters were all asleep, a few of the older ones softly snoring. She stripped off her tunic and lowered herself onto her cot.
Sometime later she
awoke with a start. A cold sweat glazed her body, drenching her nightshirt. The turbulence of uneasy dreams still roiled through her.
Amy, help him.
She froze.
He is waiting for you, Amy. In the ship.
—Father?
Go to him go to him go to him go to him …
She rose, seized with a sudden purposefulness. The moment had come.
Yet one duty remained, one final task to be performed in these last days of a life she had loved, if briefly. Through the silent hallways she padded her way to the common room. She found Mouser just where she had left him, resting on the couch. Exhaustion radiated from his eyes; his limbs were limp, he could barely raise his head.
Please, his eyes said. I’m in pain. It’s all gone on too long.
Gently she lifted him to her chest. Running a hand along his back, she turned so he could face the window, with its view of the starry night.
“See the pretty world, Mouser?” she murmured, close to his ear. “See the pretty stars?”
It’s … beautiful.
His neck broke with a snap, the body going limp in her arms. Amy stayed that way for a few minutes while his presence faded, stroking his fur, kissing his head and face. Goodbye, Mouser. Godspeed to you. The children love you; you will be with them again. Then she carried him outside to the garden shed to see about a shovel.
31
“Will you look what the wind blew in.”
A grease-stained man had directed Peter to the commissary, where he’d found Michael sitting with a group of a dozen men and women, using forks grasped in filthy hands to shovel plates of beans into their mouths. Michael leapt off the bench and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Peter Jaxon, as I live and breathe.”
“Flyers, Michael. You’re enormous.”
His friend’s chest seemed to have doubled in size, straining the fabric of his jumpsuit; his arms were roped with muscle. A robust growth of blond stubble roughened his cheeks.
“Tell you the truth, there’s not much else to do around here besides cook oil and lift weights. And word to the wise, nobody uses that word around here. It’s all ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that.’ ” He gestured toward the table. “This here’s my crew. Say hello to Peter, hombres.”
The Twelve Page 34
