“Let us go to Jamaica,” he wanted to say. “Let us break sugarcane and chew its stalks and walk in the sea together.” But the ticking or static grew louder, then faded away. He became aware of a rotten hotel room mixing with his stream and his platonic ideal of woman, making a rude palimpsest.
“No,” he said. “I am not ready.”
But now Eden or Elysium was gone, and the woman with it, and even though he knew that someone was moving outside his room he ignored this fact lest it grow too solid and scatter the memory of the dream.
“Go away,” he whispered into the shawl he had wrapped his head in, but now it seemed urgent that he should investigate. He wasn’t lounging in some subterranean parlor where he was known and protected; he was sheltered above ground among strangers, and not altogether friendly strangers, at that.
I am in Missouri!
He did not know the exact hour of the day, but his sick feeling and the weakness in his limbs told him it was bright afternoon outside, the killing sun at its lordliest post.
Someone is outside this room!
He tore off the cloth and reached for his backpack, fetching out his sunglasses, putting these on. He approached the warm rectangle of the window, where old and stinking towels had been nailed in place. His window faced north, as all the rooms the vampires had settled in did, so the sun’s rays did not beam directly on the cracked pane, nearly black with dust.
He peeled back the edge of a towel, opening a long diamond of indirect light that sickened him but did not burn, and he leaned as far back in the shadows as he could to observe the intruder.
A slight man with a blond mustache stooped at Luther’s door now, having passed by his, listening to the ticks produced by some machine he held, these ticks growing louder as he wanded it close. He nodded at some compatriot behind him and stepped back.
They were hunted, which suggested they were known.
This was bad.
Clayton was aware of his head hurting, this caused by his squinting into the furnace of sunlight even through shaded spectacles and a dirty window.
A second window he remembered in the rear bathroom might allow egress, but, again, into sunshine, and it was so small he would lose half his clothes pouring through it. Might he towel up and try to kill the intruders, then run for the pine woods? Might he charm them and then run? That seemed the best of bad options; with luck, he could make it without direct burns, but what then? The woods were not so deep as to be fully proof against the sun, though a cave or abandoned structure might offer itself. Plausible if he were not hunted, but he was, and even if he charmed or killed the first one, he could not know how many more remained. Where was the watching-lad who thought himself an Indian? What had gone wrong?
He had trusted in fools, that was what.
Now another fellow stepped up where the ticking-machine man had been, a middle-aged man with the body of a former athlete or laborer gone soft about the waist. He held in his small hand a nozzled can Clayton only too quickly recognized.
Gasoline!
“So this is it,” he said quietly, stepping back from the window.
“You were my own death,” he said to the woman from his vanished dream. The soft sound of splashing came from two doors down—Luther’s door. Clayton lay down on the dead hotel’s floor among the dry husks of insects and cigarette butts left by vagrants; substituting his backpack for the absent death-mother’s lap, he tried to assume the posture he remembered from the stream in Eden. He was not surprised to find that it was vaguely cruciform. He smiled.
He heard Calcutta saying, “Luther! Luther!”
“That one, too,” someone stage-whispered outside.
Now his door was splashed.
He closed his eyes.
An image came to him of his father’s horse groom smoking out a hornets’ nest in the stable.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let it be so.”
“Hurry,” the outside voice hissed.
Then everything changed.
The man by his door let out a yelp of pain and surprise at exactly the moment another sound rang out, rolling after as if from some distance.
A gunshot.
Clayton opened his eyes.
PART THREE
The Bereaved
20
“SISTER CLARE, YOU HAVE A VISITOR,” NATHALIE SAID. HER VOICE SOUNDED strange in Jude’s ear even though she was technically Jude’s best friend.
“A visitor?”
“Yes.”
“Who is it?”
“A man.”
“Is it my father?”
“He didn’t say he was your father. He told me a name and it’s gone right out of my head. And I even had a trick to remember it.” Her voice seemed to be swallowed by the oaken joints of the hallway outside the chandlery.
“Thank you, Sister Anne,” Jude said. The two young women addressed each other by their new names as often as possible to help one another remember. Jude still thought of herself as Jude, and she was sure the same was true for the girl who used to be Nathalie. It would take getting used to. As would the silence. Sister Clare had not heard Sister Anne speak, prayers and singing aside, for two days now.
The other novice turned to go, but then she turned back and faced her friend. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It was something to do with a candle, I should certainly be able to remember that, as many as we make. Chandler? No. Wicklow. That’s it. His name is Mr. Wicklow.”
“I don’t know a Mr. Wicklow,” Judith whispered back.
“Well,” Sister Anne said, “he seems to know you.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Not a hint. Except that it was urgent.”
“What about Mother Superior? Will I be allowed to see him?”
“You weren’t supposed to be. He spoke first to me, and I did my best to shoo him off, but he wasn’t having any. I heard Mother Superior speak to him although I didn’t hear the words. Whoever he is, he’s very persuasive.”
“Am I to miss Sext?”
“No, of course not. You’ll see him just after. You’ll have to miss lunch, but I’ll save you some. I hear it’s beets.”
“We had beets yesterday.”
“Apparently we didn’t eat enough of them. The Lord has made us rich with beets.”
“Well, yes, please save me what you can. Where did you put him?”
“On the bench in the visitation room. I told him it would be better if he came before Vespers, and he said a very odd thing.”
“Which was?”
“He said Sext was better, he knew what Sext was. He seemed like a priest.”
“Maybe he is. That’s not so odd,” Judith said.
“That’s not the odd part.”
“Tell me already.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“So is silence,” Judith said, “and we’re not doing so well with that.”
Nathalie smiled. Judith liked her smile. The women stood so close their heads nearly touched.
“He said he wouldn’t come at Vespers because he’d come from far away.”
“So?”
“He said he wouldn’t drive at night.”
“Is he old?”
“No. He has glasses, but not like Mr. Magoo.”
“I still don’t see what’s so odd.”
“He said he wouldn’t drive at night because it wasn’t safe for him.”
Judith held her breath.
She saw that her friend was going to speak again.
“Sisters,” Mother Superior called from down the hall as she passed on her way to the office. Brightly but with a note of rebuke.
Judith’s eyes begged Nathalie to tell her more.
When she saw that the young novices had not separated, Mother Mary Catherin
e stopped her busy walk and faced them. “Our Lord keeps no company with whisperers,” she said.
“Sister Anne,” Judith said.
Nathalie bowed and turned her feet as if to move away.
“Nathalie,” Judith hissed, imploring.
Mother Superior started walking toward them.
Nathalie spoke.
“He said you would know why it’s not safe to drive at night.”
Judith ran toward the visitation room.
—
THE MAN SAT ON THE BENCH LOOKING PHYSICALLY SMALL BUT SOMEHOW LARGE, as though he exceeded the boundaries of his skin. His small, wire-frame glasses intensified rather than diluted his gaze, which settled on Judith and made her flush with warmth. He closed his eyes in an overlong blink, less from fatigue or shyness than from courtesy; his was a gaze that might stir dust devils from a heap of ash. She walked to him in fast, long strides and he stood, taking his hat in his hands, then setting it on the bench, meeting her eyes again. He had the dark hair and good posture of a man of thirty-five, but he had seen too much of something and he carried it. He smiled, and the smile was brightened by the darkness he carried behind it. He offered his hand through the iron grate that separated them—how like a cage it looked—and, even though she knew it was against the order’s rules, she took its cool, uncallused strength in hers. She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say, so he spoke.
“Judith Anabelle Lamb?”
She nodded.
“My name is Phillip Wicklow. I am one of a group who call ourselves the Bereaved, and with good reason. I have come to tell you that the statements you made to the Arizona State Police concerning what you saw on the night of May 13, 1967, are accurate. Your husband was murdered by people who died some time ago but who persist because they prey on the living. Your abducted son, Glendon, is almost certainly dead, but we intend to find and destroy the beings responsible for your tragedy, and we believe you can help us do that. We have evidence that your status as a nun, even a novice, will grant you some power to harm them. Are you interested in that? Harming those who took your family from you? Stopping them from harming others?”
She mouthed a word but gave it no voice.
Yes.
“Excellent. Then I’ll need you to pack your things, if you have any things, and come with me. Try to appease the good woman I see politely monitoring us through the window and get her to grant you a leave of absence from the abbey. If you can’t, we hope to strike before you are formally expelled for abandoning your post, which could take a month or more. Even if you are expelled, your faith and your familiarity with sacred paraphernalia still make you dangerous to them. Mrs. Lamb, are you in or out?”
“How long do I have to decide?”
“Do you see the car just across the street from the property?”
She looked. A nondescript yellow car sat hunched against the new, green corn.
“I’ll need you in that car within the hour. If you come with me, you will have difficult and dangerous work to do, and you will find out things about the true nature of creation that you cannot unlearn. If not, the world needs candles, too. But I will not be back, and you will never find me.”
She felt a breeze on her face, warm and faintly sweet with rot; a trio of crows hopped and gathered near a grayish smear on the pavement.
“May I ask you a question?” she said.
“Whatever you like.”
“Are you a priest?”
He looked down and away, aiming his gaze at the crows and their banquet.
“I was.”
—
“MY FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’LL DO WITHOUT YOU.”
Nathalie said it as Jude made her bed again, yanking the corners crisp and tight. The room seemed very small, what with the whole world outside breathing on the window glass.
“Aside from a mountain of penance for missing Sext and maybe lunch while I say good-bye. Now you say, ‘Who’s saving beets for you, Sister Anne.’ Except you’re too upset to joke. That man upset you, of course he did. It’s why your hands are shaking. It’s why you’re leaving. It has to do with your tragedy, doesn’t it? Of course it does. He brought bad news that sounds like good news, brought it like a bee bringing pollen in its baskets. I would ask you to stay and think about it, at least until I could sit and listen in the chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. Maybe I would hear God’s little voice telling me if you are really supposed to go or not. To whatever place you’re going, someplace that scares you, that much is clear. Don’t forget to be safe. Don’t forget to write me, please. We’re like sisters, blood sisters, I mean. We started together. I guess I thought we might always be here, gardening, singing. That we would always know each other. Maybe Sister Mary Monica would say this was right, you leaving, I mean; that being close to you distracts me from prayer and contemplation. That it delays the trial of solitude that makes the silence from which we hear God’s bigger voice. But that’s all right for her, she has Sister Columbine, and those close friendships are permitted for the older sisters. I guess they’re afraid, well, you know what they’re afraid of. Oh, it hurts me to see your hands shake like that. Are you still Sister Clare? Or are you Jude again? I suppose you’re always going to be Jude for me, which is a sin of some kind, I’m sure of it, but I’ll sit with that until you’re Sister Clare and I’m Sister Anne and even the Reverend Mother can find no fault in us. If you’ll stay. Will you stay? No, of course you won’t. Is it your son?”
Jude nodded. Sat on the bed. Looked at Nathalie.
“Maybe we’re neither one of us meant for this. Maybe Sister Mary Catherine was right the first time. She nearly refused me, too, you know. Said I reminded her more of a wild hermit mystic than a Cistercian, but that there was nothing wrong with that. Maybe my mind’s too busy to quiet down and make candles only and only pray. To be around people and not talk, it’s so hard. We sign to each other around the other sisters, just like they do, that’s permitted, and everything I have to say to them I can say with my hands. But there are no hand signs for how much you mean to me. This didn’t turn out at all like I thought it would. I thought a contemplative order would let me hear God better, it was all I wanted. I felt so sure once. Did you feel sure, or were you just hiding here?”
Jude looked at her, the tremors going through her getting smaller.
“You don’t know, do you?”
Nathalie sat next to Jude. A bell sounded.
“There’s the end of Sext. An hour, you said. An hour isn’t enough. I promise I don’t talk like this to anyone else, the words just pour out of me when I’m with you. It’s your eyes, your sky-colored eyes, I fall into them. I suppose I also fall into the hole that’s in your heart, there’s such a vacuum there, maybe now you’ll find whatever you need to make you heal. Maybe you’ll find that it’s here after all and come back. Will you at least think about that? Coming back? You wouldn’t be the first to leave and then return, though so few leave. It’s nice here, after all, away from traffic and wars and the radio, so much noise on the radio. Will you take your sandals? Of course you will, you can’t walk out of here barefoot. And your socks, though it’s not cold now, only a little at night. Oh, Jude. May I hold you?”
Jude nodded. Nathalie put her thin arms around her friend, rested her head on her shoulder. Sister Columbine walked by, holding a rosary and whispering, glancing once into the door Jude had left blamelessly open. She walked on, still whispering, her face innocent of approval or disapproval. It was Sister Mary Monica and the Reverend Mother who thought these birds nested too closely, but they, too, passed by without comment.
Jude gripped the smaller girl hard now, her boyish hands all but hurting Nathalie’s shoulders. Jude kissed her temple once, long, her nose filling with Nathalie’s faint scent of garden sweat and black tea. Jude rose from the bed in her work clothes, put on her socks and sandals. She t
ook her habit and rosary in a small handbag. Just before she moved out the door for the last time, she kissed her fingers, then turned her palm to Nathalie, something between a blown kiss and a kiss of peace. Nathalie sensed that her friend was heading into a profound darkness full of biting and broken bones; that she was going there to stand in the stead of innocents; that she was the closest thing to a saint Nathalie would ever meet; that they would never meet again in person, or, if they did, they would not recognize each other.
The young woman stared at the emptiness where Jude had been. The tears were not long behind, and when they came she would savor them, she would kiss them from her own fingertips. She had no stomach for lunch, not for beets, not for honey, not even for Sister Columbine’s cheese and potato casserole.
The hanger that once held Jude’s habit still swung gently.
When it was still, Nathalie would let herself cry, but she would shut the door. Her grief was between her and Jude. Or, now that Jude was gone, between her and God. This was what it was to be a cloistered contemplative; to lose everything but God, and to do nothing about it. To be passive as a lamb.
“You’re not a lamb at all,” she told the hanger. “You’re a wild boar. And someone’s going to get the tusk.”
21
“IT’S BRAVE OF YOU TO TAKE THIS STEP,” THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF WICKLOW said. Farms drifted by outside the car windows, their soil fertile and sweet on the air that buffeted her through the quartered window. Classical music played over static, Judith wasn’t sure what song or composer it was, she didn’t know classical music. She had been meaning to correct this since she wept at Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when her tenth-grade English teacher, Sister Henriette, played it for a roomful of acneous sophomores on a cheap picnic record player. What Beethoven, who was German, or Henriette, a mousy French-Canadian who sounded like a duck, had to do with English class Jude never knew, but she wept at the relentless fall of the piano keys, each note driving at something mute and powerful and sad that grew in the center of her and was perhaps only now flowering. Cows lined up at a sagging wire fence, probing the air with their gentle tongues, calves shouldering into mothers’ legs, tails swishing in light that had just matured into something like gold. Now the sun, well behind the speeding car, ducked behind a raft of clouds.
The Suicide Motor Club Page 11
