Milton's speeches were always simple and very short at funerals. His talent was for uplifting messages, encouragement, and flights of speculation and hope. He believed it better to leave people with their private thoughts and pain, perhaps to remind them of their responsibilities before they went back to their regular lives. I've always thought he was quite right in this, and that day was no exception.
"My friends," he began, "two of us are now a part of our community only with their bodies, for their spirits-or most of their spirits-have left us. But whatever is left, we will honor and remember and protect. We owe that tiny bit of reverence and gratitude, for all the joy they gave us. Mr. Enders had no family, but the children of the community saw him every day, and I know you'll remember him fondly. Rachel's child would've had a loving family, and I can imagine how much you all will want to comfort her after this loss." I thought I detected more accusation or admonition in Milton's statement about Ms. Dresden than in his comments about Mr. Enders. "Let us go, and remember, and help one another heal."
We dispersed after that. Ms. Dresden stayed to cast a handful of flowers over the wrought iron fence, onto the more or less uncomprehending heads of our deceased. We waited patiently and discreetly for her by our truck. After she left the fence, people offered their condolences. Will spoke with her briefly. I thought it was nice of him, as he didn't usually say much, but her situation was so sad I imagined anyone would be moved by it.
On the way home, Ms. Dresden sat between me and my mom, silent, though she squeezed my hand when she first got back in the truck. Inertia or not, I looked in her small, sparkling green eyes and wondered whether I could ever have as much strength, or even if that was something to hope for. I vaguely remembered a line I had read somewhere, that to the one who has much, more will be given, and I thought how some people had a lot of sorrow, and sometimes they were given even more sorrows. Perhaps that was Rachel, and I could hardly envy her, but only marvel, and squeeze her hand, our eyes locked for a moment of perfect understanding and compassion.
Chapter 14
Over the following days I was anxious that Will might not come back after what had happened. I certainly wouldn't have blamed him. It was nice enough of him to take us out, when, from what I could tell, the outings didn't offer him anything tangible. Unable to speak, I couldn't imagine Lucy and I were much company, though I think we had tried our best. But for him to be with us when it was positively dangerous to do so, I thought very unlikely.
After the incident, Lucy seemed especially nice, always letting me get close to her or touch her without objecting, as though she were making up for what had happened, or showing me that she wasn't as savage and violent as she had appeared that day. If Will didn't come back, it wouldn't be so bad to stay here with her and her music and my haphazard collection of books. I did have to admit I was a little disappointed. That library had really filled me with hope. There was little point in dwelling on mistakes or false hopes, however, so I enjoyed our days there in the storage facility as best I could. I spent much of the time typing up our story. I was happy with the progress I had made on my journal, and how my writing seemed to improve with practice, coming to me more naturally the more I put down on paper.
After that day, I had also decided on a special project that I needed to do. I would need Lucy's help, especially her better coordination. Finding the supplies was the easy part, there were always so many miscellaneous and useful things around where we lived. From one unit, I grabbed a rope and some wooden slats, about two feet long, and in another cubicle, where I'd seen some medical equipment, I handed Lucy a crutch.
We roamed between the buildings until we found the girl Will had shot. She had not been able to stand since, but pulled herself along with her hands, agonizingly slow. Some of her fingernails had torn off with the exertion. Even though she no longer bled, the wounds looked horrible, and it was impossible to know how much pain they caused her. I knelt next to her, and Lucy followed my lead. I, of course, couldn't make the girl understand what I was trying to do, so she growled and tried to push my hands away. She seemed to trust Lucy more, as Lucy made soothing sounds to her, and gradually she struggled against me less, so I could put four of the slats as a brace along her wounded leg. I was very glad Lucy was there, first to calm the girl, and then to help tie the slats to her leg. I didn't have the dexterity to do it on my own.
When it was done, I thought she might be able to stand, as her knee wouldn't just immediately give out, but I didn't think she'd be able to put all her weight on it, so walking would be difficult, compounded by not being able to bend at the knee. Lucy and I helped her stand, then slowly loosened our grip till she was standing on her own. She grunted her approval, then tried to take a step and faltered, but we caught her and held her up. I tried to put the crutch under her shoulder, but it was too long. There were two bolts with wing nuts near the bottom of the crutch, so you could slide the bottom strut in and out to adjust the height. I held it up and fumbled with those, until Lucy put her delicate fingers on them and loosened them while I braced the girl. Lucy slid the strut in to its shortest position, threaded the bolts back into their holes, and put the wing nuts back on. We put it under the girl's shoulder, and I put her hand on the crutch's handle and pushed on her fingers till she had tightened her grip. Now we could let go of her completely and she was able, slowly and with difficulty, to hobble around. She looked at us and nodded.
I took Lucy back to our cubicle and she snuggled up to me. I felt good about what we had accomplished, and more reassured that Lucy had acted to protect the girl and the boy the other day. At least, mostly. Certainty was a luxury which I lacked now in most things, even assuming I or anyone else ever had it as much as we hoped or liked to believe we did.
Eventually, Will returned. I heard the usual commotion as the people in the storage facility milled to the fence near our cubicle. A lock and chain flew over their heads and landed near Lucy and me. The crowd then shuffled to the other end of the area, farthest from the front gate. "Truman," I heard Will call, "if you want to come out, then take the chain and lock and secure the inner gate, so the others are kept at this end. Then go to the main gate with Blue Eye."
I looked to Lucy. She nodded. We did as Will had instructed. When he met us at the main gate, he looked behind and around all the buildings, and we did the same, making sure no one was hiding again. Convinced it was safe, he opened the gate, let us out, and locked it behind us.
He looked at us a minute. "We okay?" he asked. "No misunderstanding or bad feelings? Well, I don't know how you'd express them if there were, but I kind of like you guys. I don't want you to think I'd do anything to hurt any of you all. Okay?"
Lucy and I nodded.
"Good. I thought you might want to see more of your old school, Truman. Maybe we could find your old office, or get some more books. Let's go."
On the long walk to Stony Ridge College, Will told us two people had died in his community. As usual, I didn't know how to express my feelings, but I hoped he knew that I shared their sadness.
When we got to the college, we looked around at some different buildings, passing by what looked like the cafeteria and some classroom buildings. I hoped Will had a plan for searching, because I didn't know how to go about it. All the buildings were labeled things like "Adams Hall" or "Ridgecrest Commons," with no indication on the outside of whether they were offices, classrooms, or something else. At one point, Lucy and I rested on the stone steps of one building, while Will went inside. I at least was very tired from all the walking in the hot sun, though it felt good to be out and good that Will trusted us.
He came back out soon after. "Well, Dr. Truman, please come in. We've been expecting you." He smiled as he held the door open for us. He could be quite playful. It was very endearing, I thought.
On a board just inside the door, there was a list of offices, and on it, my name. I had been a member of the Philosophy Department, and my office was on the second floor. I was more dum
bfounded than anything else. Philosophy? I liked the sound of it, but I didn't remember specifics, or what I did or thought or believed in. It was intimidating, like there would be more expectations and demands now that I was a "philosopher." The designation made it seem as though I had loved wisdom more than other people did. And what arrogance if I had ever thought that I did. I just had read and studied more than other people, and I had been a philosophy teacher. Since I'd forgotten most everything I'd known, I wasn't even that anymore, and certainly not a "philosopher." As we walked upstairs, I became increasingly apprehensive about what we would find in my office.
We got to a wooden door with my name on it. The building was old, so Will easily kicked in the door. He stepped aside and let me be the first to enter the small office. There were bookshelves along the wall to the right, a desk with a chair behind it and two in front of it, and a window on the wall opposite the door. On the wall to the left were some diplomas and a large print of "The Death of Socrates."
I was a little disappointed, as the decorations didn't seem too original, but I supposed it was harder for philosophy professors to find pictures related to their work than, say, art or literature professors. Besides, it took some of the intimidation away from my unknown, previous self, so I was less worried about living up to some especially august, original thinker.
Everything was neat and intact. No one had touched anything since the last time I had been in it, whenever that had been. I glanced at the books as I walked around the desk. I would look at them in a minute, but for right now, the desk was the more urgent object of curiosity.
There was a computer screen and a keyboard on the desk, and a pencil holder with pens and a letter opener in it, and some piles of handwritten papers and photocopies. I saw the handwritten papers had names written across the top. The last papers of dozens of students, I supposed, and wondered for a moment what had happened to all of them.
The most important things were the two framed photographs. These were the sort of things I was both seeking and about which I was apprehensive. Both photos seemed to be taken on vacations, with one in some warm place where everyone was wearing shorts, and the other in the winter, everyone bundled up in big, puffy coats, with hats and gloves. In each, I stood with a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. The woman was pretty, especially as she didn't have any parts missing or damaged, that I could see. She was fairly slender and had short, blonde hair. I automatically thought maybe that was a good thing, that at least I still liked blondes, but immediately thought what a stupid thing to have as the only connection to your past-what a trivial, useless, grossly physical detail.
The children were small, perhaps eight and ten years old, I guessed. Neither the woman nor the children summoned any affection or remembrance, beyond the usual sadness that these people were probably dead now.
But the whole scene filled me with sorrow and loss that I couldn't feel or remember anything. Even if I had done a great many more evil things than I remembered, I could not understand what I had done to deserve or cause this strange, disconnected life I had. I wondered if other people felt the same way, and that made it worse, as I realized that I had little way to ask them or express my sympathy for them if they did. I again remembered what crying was, and felt more cheated and alone that I couldn't even do that.
Lucy had come around the desk and stood next to me. She looked at the pictures and ran her graceful fingers over them. I set the one picture-the one of my family in the winter-back on the desk. I turned the other one over in my hands and started fumbling with the little clips on the back, trying to remove the picture from the frame. Lucy helped me. She folded the picture neatly twice and put it in the pocket of my shirt, closing the pocket's little flap over it. She pressed her tiny hand against me there. Then her one good eye rested on mine, and she pointed to herself and shook her head slowly and gave a very low, quiet moan. I couldn't tell exactly what was going through her mind, but I knew she felt badly, threatened, unwanted, useless. I knew the feeling quite well myself. I took her hand and put it back on my chest, on the photo, above where my heart sat silent but full. I looked in her eye. I didn't know whether to shake my head to stop her from thinking I didn't want her anymore, or to nod to show that I did want her, so I gave the little wheeze that we used to mean generally good, kind, positive things.
"Of course he still likes you, Blue Eye," Will offered from across the desk. He'd picked up the winter photo and was looking between it and us. "It's hard when you remember people you loved who are gone. It's something the people around you now can't understand, but it doesn't mean you don't like them. I know. It's just something you have to feel by yourself. Do you remember them now, Truman? Do you remember when these two pictures were taken?"
I could only shake my head.
He set down the picture. "Well, that's hard too, I guess. I often wondered what that would be like, if I could just forget the past. Meet all new people. Be off by myself with nothing to remind me of the past. But of course I can't. And it was hard, thinking of all the bad things I've seen-my mom and all the other people being killed, and all the other stuff. Maybe your way is just different, but they're both hard. I'm sorry if it made you sad, seeing them, but maybe it's nice to have their picture now, so at least there's some little connection with them." He actually reached out and patted Lucy on the shoulder, which I thought was remarkably kind. "And don't you worry. He's yours now." He looked back at me and smiled. He was going to be playful again. "If you still want him, all Mr. Big Smarty Pants professor now, with all his fancy books and diplomas. He won't want to hang around with us ‘regular' people. What do they call that? Oh, yeah, ‘putting on airs.' That'll be him from now on." He made funny gestures as he said this. Lucy looked back and forth between us and gave her tortured little laugh, and I felt a tiny bit better.
The books on the shelves were almost all about philosophy, though many had the word "ethics" in the title. None of them looked familiar, exactly, but they all filled me with the same excitement and enthusiasm and wonder as the trip to the library had. I was picking out some to take with us when Will gave a little chuckle. "Well, if we thought he was bad before, Blue Eye, now he'll really be impossible." He held up a thin volume that had my name on the cover. "Now he's even an author."
I took the book from Will. It was entitled Virtue Ethics and the Social Contract. I liked it better than the slogan I'd read in the college's brochure, though I found it a little daunting and cumbersome. At least I had some inkling of what the terms meant. I read the back cover. Apparently, in the book I outlined the specific implications that virtue ethics could hold for social ethics, forming a better foundation for modern society than the social contract model, and even forming a bridge or rapprochement between neo-Aristotelianism and some deontological thought. A professor from Oxford liked it, or so he was quoted on the back. I stopped to wonder whether there was anything left in England, or anywhere else, but then I went back to pondering what in the world I had written. I concluded that I would need to do a lot of other reading just to figure out what I had once thought.
"Heady stuff, Truman," Will said, putting my book and a few others into a small pack he had brought. "I was wondering if you'd written any books when we were in the library, but I couldn't figure out a way to look for them. There's no card catalogs because everything was online, and it would've taken days to search the library on our own. So I'm glad you found it. An ethical zombie? A virtuous zombie?" He looked at me and nodded. "Yes, I suppose you are, Truman. I mean it."
I supposed this was a compliment, so I tried to smile, but just a little since I knew people didn't like how it looked.
On the long journey home, Will stopped at one of the crossroads. On the road crossing ours, some of the grass and plants were crushed in two long strips. I didn't connect them to tire tracks until I saw how Will examined them with a look of concern and confusion.
"That's funny," he said. "When I was in town a few days ago there was no talk ab
out a foraging raid out this way. Those things take time to plan and set up. They would've told me. And there'd be more than one vehicle. This is just one. It's a big vehicle, like a big truck. Maybe someone just wanted a quick fill up of fuel. But that doesn't make sense. There isn't a gate in the fence on this road. The fence runs right across it. That's weird."
In the distance, something roared like an engine. It lasted only a second. Will stood and scanned the trees and fields. He still looked concerned. "We're close to the fence. It's all farms inside the fence around here. Could be people starting up a tractor. But I don't hear anything more."
We listened a few seconds. Then there were three short, loud sounds. As with the tire tracks, I didn't make the connection at first. I had been so focused on the tracks and the sound of the engine that I thought maybe the sounds were from a vehicle backfiring. I looked at Will.
"It could just be hunters," he said, but I saw that his look had gone from concerned to worried. "But they should know not to hunt so near the farms. There are lots of kids out there this time of year."
I looked in the direction Will had been looking and suddenly realized what we had heard: three gunshots.
Chapter 15
With all the anticipation before and tragedy after my vows, I was very glad to get away from the city. It was a tradition that after school was done, the bigger children would spend a few weeks out in the country, working on some of the farms. The older people called it "summer camp," and although there was a lot of work involved, the farmers did always make it into a fun, vacation-like atmosphere for us. We worked in the day, then stayed up late at night, listening to stories of what the world had been like, about cities in Europe and Asia that the older people had visited, or places in the United States like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Las Vegas, or Disneyworld.
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