“You okay, Rach?” she heard Will ask.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Just kind of thinking about her. Wondering about stuff. Feeling sad and grateful and happy all at the same time.” Rachel didn’t think Will would quite understand what she and Truman had talked about—and she was definitely never going to tell him about the arm-grabbing, no matter what—but her description now was accurate, as far as it went. She’d never get over how sleeping with someone meant there were so many things you didn’t have to explain, things you could just take for granted, even as that intimacy precluded so many other topics of conversation. Just some more funny stuff to consider, but it gave her a hint of a smile as she sat there holding the face of the one who had saved them.
“Oh.” Pause. “How’s Truman?”
“He’s fine. He wants you to find an island to bury her on.”
“That’s good. I was worried about what to do with her. You know—a dead body, one that’s all the way dead. You can’t just let it sit around forever.”
Rachel inhaled deeply. There was no odor, just the freshest, clearest air she could imagine. “She won’t smell, don’t worry.”
“Well, if you say so. I still can’t believe how fast she was, how she saved us from those jerks.”
Rachel leaned down, bringing her forehead closer to the shattered, covered shape before her. “I believe it,” she said, and then kept mouthing the first two words silently, over and over.
Chapter 43: Truman
“Please, Truman, please come with us.”
Truman looked at Rachel’s tear-streaked face as she knelt next to him. She’d been pleading this way for some time, long after Will had given up and loaded the shovels back into the rowboat. She looked prettier than ever. Thinking of the years ahead, sitting on the island alone, Truman considered how feminine beauty might be the one thing he’d miss. Nothing else had much savor anymore for him. All the rest of human interaction or the natural world had faded to a grey, undifferentiated mass of boredom and pain when he’d held Lucy’s sweet, shattered head in his hands. But Lucy’s beauty, along with that of all the rest of her sex, remained as scintillating and varied as ever, in all its many forms.
Rachel’s attractiveness was so different from Lucy’s, or Ramona’s for that matter—cherubic, wet, overflowing with emotion and with all the strength and weakness of her mortality. It was probably quite different from his wife’s charms, if he could remember her. Truman felt so bad for having frightened Rachel. She didn’t deserve that. She was young and smart and only averagely selfish: someone like that deserved just a little self-reproach, not a nasty, violent threat from someone who was just as selfish and weak as she was. He’d make that one of the things he contemplated in his exile—his prideful, wicked torment of her.
“No, Rachel,” he said quietly. “I told you—I don’t think we should be around each other so much, living and dead people. It’s not right. Maybe for Lucy, she could, but she was stronger than me. She loved and hated you all so much more, and that sustained her somehow. Me—I just feel angry around living people, now that she’s gone. I blame them. They make me feel sick inside, to be frank.”
Rachel collapsed in deeper sobs that separated her words from one another and threatened to make her hyperventilate. Such frail things, these living humans: a little too much or too little air and they’d pass out.
“Why—won’t—you—forgive—me?” Rachel trailed off into an inarticulate wail that subsided into a moan.
Her head was down, so she couldn’t see Truman smiling at her as he ran his hand through her hair—not lightly this time, but luxuriating in the sensuous, thick curls as they snaked around his dry, stiff fingers. She didn’t flinch at all, didn’t show any sign of mistrust, even after how he’d acted before. He would make that another object of thought and analysis in the days to come—how fully and freely these people could forgive, even forget. It was another quality he knew he didn’t share, as much as he longed to.
“I forgive you, Rachel,” he whispered. “Don’t cry. And you hardly need my forgiveness. But I know how I feel. I know how she felt too. With her, everything came up from so deep inside, as though it started in her stomach. Her feelings had power and authority—over herself, over everyone. Mine don’t. They just come from my head, and that’s too weak and muddled to stand all the pain and passion that you people bring. But I want you to be happy. I do. She did. So be happy, Rachel, and don’t cry.”
She looked up, her face florid from the weeping. “Won’t there be storms? This island’s so tiny—you’ll be swept away. Aren’t there hurricanes around here, Will?”
Truman looked at Will. He was so charming too, in his way. He’d tried to reason with Truman before, but once he decided it was useless, he just stopped, unlike Rachel. No emotional appeal, no begging. Just rational discourse that came to a measured end when it was no longer useful. Truman wouldn’t need to consider Will and his way of thinking so much, because it was so close to his own, but he’d ponder his generous, simple soul, as well as the mystery that had brought them together, all those months ago.
“I think so,” Will said. “We’ve come pretty far south.”
Truman looked over his head at the branches of the tree above him. He had no idea what kind it was, but it had a tall, thick trunk, even though its branches didn’t spread out too far. “This tree looks old,” he said. “It didn’t get swept away. I’ll hold on to it if I have to. I’ll share its fate.”
“What will you do, just sitting here?” Rachel sniffed. Truman was glad she’d calmed down.
He patted the large duffle bag of books next to him. “I have my books. I haven’t really felt like reading them since she died, but I think one day I might.”
Will held out a tin cup to Truman. “You asked me before if I had one of these you could keep,” he said.
Truman took it. “Oh, thank you, Will. You taught Lucy and me to drink water back when we first met. That was so kind of you. I’ll let the cup fill when it rains, so I can drink from it and remember you.” He moved his hand to Rachel’s chin. “And I’ll always remember you, Rachel.”
She embraced him. Exactly like Lucy, she was unbelievably strong for a woman her size. And it still shocked Truman, how living people were so warm and soft. It was like you were sinking into them when they touched you, as though they’d swallow you up, absorb and crush you into their burning flesh, and you’d be lost in their too-vital selves. It was frightening even as it was exhilarating, but Truman enjoyed it nonetheless and thought the touch of another person was something else he’d deeply miss: and unlike the infinite variety of female beauty, each human embrace was exactly the same in some way, with the same sense of urgency and longing as every other one, from one end of the world to the other, from one age to the next.
Truman leaned back against the tree and watched the rowboat glide across the water, returning Will and Rachel to their ship, and whatever lay in store for them. Truman rested his hand on the bag of books—all those words by men even deader than he, but their ideas sharper and more alive than his dull, clouded mind. And beneath and all around him, her spirit—her driving, consuming spirit of love, surrender, destruction, and rebirth—deliriously throbbed.
Yes, this was where he belonged now. Truman closed his eyes, overcome by the idea that if the mass of dead were always increasing, and if the only thing that survived death were desire, then the total amount of desire in the universe would always continue to grow, whether to infinity or to some unknown upper limit the mind could never reach. Truman would make that another object of contemplation. It was a calculus both terrifying and thrilling to him, and one he felt sure would sustain forever those it did not crush with its threat and promise.
Chapter 44: Will
Will looked back at Rachel, sitting at the stern of the sailboat. He considered her a moment, then followed her gaze across the water to where they’d left Truman. Will couldn’t figure either of them out, really, for the last couple days. W
ell, maybe Truman, a little. He could imagine being so distraught you just sat down and didn’t want to deal with anything anymore. He couldn’t imagine doing it for very long, though—he was just too anxious, needed activity and distraction too much. Better to throw yourself into some purpose, some job, than just sit there.
And Rachel? First she wanted to stay in the city, then she wanted to go, then she got so upset about leaving Truman behind. She’d always liked and trusted him, but what was it with her and Lucy, before that? She’d knelt over the body so long—first on the ship, then when they laid it on the ground on the island. It wasn’t like those two were ever close—quite the opposite. Will was sad about Lucy, too, but it was over, finished, and it didn’t make any sense to dwell on it. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, what happened to her. It was brave of her to do what she did, and they should just accept that and be grateful. So why did Truman want to spend the rest of his days sitting on a little spit of land with no one around and nothing to do? How long would that be, anyway? Years? Maybe even decades, or longer? Sounded pretty hellish to Will. And why was Rachel acting like it was the end of the world? People were weird.
“I’m sorry, Rach,” he tried to begin. “I don’t know why he wanted to stay there.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “He knew what he wanted. But I’ll miss him. I was so mean to him.”
“No—you just wanted to be happy. It’s not your fault.”
She turned toward him and raised her voice. “No!” She glared at him. “Stop saying that. It is my fault. I was cruel to two people who were good to me, kind to me, tried to help me. It doesn’t matter that they don’t still have a pulse—I owed them everything, and instead I hurt them. That city was wrong, it was evil, and I got caught up in it, but it’s still my fault.”
Rachel got up and walked over to him. She slipped her small, solid frame next to his, her arm around his waist. “It’s good we got out of there, if we’re going to have kids,” she said, then paused a second. “If you still want to.”
Will was taken aback by the comment, but didn’t hesitate at all. “Of course,” he said. What was she so upset about? He still didn’t quite get it.
Rachel leaned her head down. “Good. I think I’m pregnant.”
Now Will was completely overcome by her words, torn between surprise, joy, and apprehension, and still confused at how she was acting. He grasped her chin to tilt her head up and look in her wet, sparkling eyes. To him, her plaintiveness was as captivating as her anger or cunning, just in a different way. He was shocked she didn’t look happy, though. If anything, her expression was a mixture of sorrow and longing.
“That’s great,” Will said. “What’s wrong? You look so sad.”
She looked at him very intently, lowering her brows. “I am,” she said softly. “This doesn’t change that, even if I’m happy at the same time. Being pregnant is just something I have to do, something I’m supposed to do. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, since she died, and as I got more sure I was pregnant. We owe it to them. It’s the only way we’re superior to them. But that just makes it another thing we don’t deserve. So that’s what I’m feeling right now—sad at all the joy I don’t deserve. Does that make sense?”
She was acting and talking so weird, though that wasn’t quite the right word. Mysterious, was more like it, and it didn’t frustrate Will as much as before. He closed his eyes as he leaned down to her. The scent of the soap they’d had in the city—an unnatural smell that was at once too sweet and too acerbic—was nearly gone. Rachel had been pressing her face into Lucy’s shroud so long she had that musty odor in her hair, along with some sand from the island—all of it combining into something weedy, salty, and bitter, something frail and irresistible at the same time. Will tilted his head a little to nuzzle her, pressing his forehead instead of his nose into her hair.
“I love you,” he whispered. Just as he said it, he was overcome with the thought that the exact spot where Lucy had kissed him was now pressed against Rachel. The thought so overwhelmed him that he didn’t actually hear her response, though everything about the moment—her body, her smell, her voice, all the strange things she’d said, the memory of Lucy’s unexpected, fated kiss—all of this filled him with a euphoria that he longed to hold on to forever, as well as the strength, he felt sure, to do so.
***
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