Milton, holding the pile of hair in a fold of his robe, walked off into the darkness in the direction of the moaning. The sound diminished slightly for a few moments, then it rose to a shriek and a howl. I relaxed my grip on my knees and nearly wept at the sound; it was the first positive accomplishment in the rite, meaning that my offering was acceptable.
Though it was too dark to see, I knew Milton had gone to the fence behind which the dead of our community were kept, unable to hurt us or be hurt by us. The area had, appropriately, been a small cemetery with a high, wrought-iron fence around it. This fence had been reinforced with more bars, so the smaller among the dead couldn't squeeze through. On a night of first vows, Milton would cast the initiate's hair in with the dead. Their reaction to the touch and smell of something that had so recently been in contact with warm, living flesh was usually wild and enthusiastic, as it was that night. We had no way of knowing whether this was only their ravenous, physical hunger for our bodies, or some residual longing and remembrance of what it had been like to be near us and touch us in less animal and destructive ways; the latter seemed too sentimental for the horrible reality of undeath, the former too cold and objective to grasp. Whatever it was that drove them, it was a connection they craved, and we owed it to them.
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.
Chapter 10
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.
On part of the canopy's white sheet metal, which was now tilted down and visible from the road, someone had spray-painted "DRY" in bright orange paint. Will gestured to it. "When we get all the fuel from a station, we mark it, so people don't waste time on it later. That's partly why you all are here-we've gotten everything we can use out of this town, so no one will come to this area anymore. Now it'll all just sink into the ground and be covered over with plants. A whole town, just disappeared. And of course, they're all like that. Do you remember the town where you used to live, Truman?"
I shook my head. I thought it was nice of him to ask, though.
"That's funny, how you remember some stuff, but not things that relate just to you, like where you lived. What about you, Blue Eye?"
She stopped and considered the buildings around us. She shook her head, then raised her arm with her hand bent and the palm down, as if indicating something taller than herself.
I thought I knew what she meant-we had been able to communicate a little using similar pantomime-but I looked over to Will to see if he understood.
"You lived in a city," he asked, "in a tall building?"
Lucy nodded.
"It must've been the really big city east of here. That's where we found you. That's where Milton has been clearing you all out for the last couple
years, but there are so many there, I don't know when he'll ever finish."
At the end of the little town, the road extended into the fields beyond, barely distinguishable beneath the plants. In the cracks and in the fields where the grass wasn't so high, I picked some dandelions and wanted to put one in Lucy's hair. Even after we'd been together and close for a while, sometimes she didn't like to be touched, and with someone else around I really wasn't sure how she'd react. I approached her carefully and showed her the flower. She smiled a little and I knew it was all right. Almost the same yellow as her scarf, the dandelion looked nice behind her ear. Out in the sun, she shone so beautifully, even more than at home, I thought.
Will smiled too. He definitely still looked rather serious, alert, dangerous, but not at all mean or angry as he had on previous visits. "Those dry up so quick, Truman," he said. He picked one of the ones that had gone to seed and blew the little parachute seeds off to float over the grass. "I used to pick them for my mom all the time. They'd be all closed up by the end of the day. Funny isn't it? They grow so fast, and take over the whole yard and choke the grass, but when you pluck them, they don't last as long as other things. Funny."
Among the tall grass in the field beyond the road, some lilies had grown. Their trumpet-like flowers were big and orange, with little black flecks, like brushstrokes. Will pointed them out to me. "Tiger lilies. At least, that's what I was told they're called. They'd last longer once you pick them. Go ahead. No reason for her not to have more than one flower." I did as Will suggested, and now a lovely pair of yellow and orange flowers peeked out from under her scarf, just above her blue eye, underlined by the pure, innocent white of her skin.
"But you know, Truman, you may be right," Will continued as he considered her. "Maybe dandelions are a good choice too. You could grow some where you live in that little patch of ground by the office. Here, pick some of the seedy ones and put them in your pocket."
Life Sentence Page 9
