Hello hello hello hello hello hello, said Kat beside me.
I could not see her but I heard Leah snort close by. The rock walls were
wet and cold when I brushed them. It is not funny I said. I could hear her
sandals moving around. Kat told me that every month three kids get lost
and die in there. Shut up I said. Leah said that it was the truth she knew
one of them. Kat said yeah that was right it was Billy from math class.
I said I did not believe them but then I imagined my voice echoing down
over the bodies and I shivered.
I felt a sudden cold hand on my shoulders.
Why don't you go in and find them? Kat whispered at me and then
she pushed me in deeper and my feet went out, the floor dropped. I
screamed but it was just a small step I did not fall. There weren't any
bodies. I could hear Leah laughing and laughing outside. I do not know
why Kat did that. What is wrong with her. I would not have done that
to her.
Then the old man felt the boy pull away and in the slow darkness he turned slowly and then he saw her too.
She lay bundled in white sheets and gauze at the end of the third aisle. Her slouched cot barred, the rails folded up and locked in place. It was her. Not the woman he had met on that dark morning and not the woman he had left in the earth for dead but someone lighter, more translucent, startled out of herself. She lay with her face crushed into the pillow, the sculpted hollow of her clavicle pooling with light, and he watched the boy's bony shoulders rise and fall where he bent above her. The shells of her ears were white from the dried plaster dust that stuck to everything.
What's wrong with her? the boy asked as he approached.
The old man scraped a plastic milk crate from under a nearby bed over to the woman's cot and sat wearily. The floor under the cot was bare asphalt, slashed by the white painted lines of a parking lot.
I don't know, son, he said. Let her sleep.
Is she sick?
I don't think so.
Her cot smelled of rust and blood. The walls of that tent were orange and cast a cool orange light over all and when the old man peered up he saw netting had been slung overhead between the posts and in the netting were bundles of clothes, bedsheets, bandages. His knees had begun to ache.
Well and what did you think
would happen?
he grimaced.
Old was twenty years ago. Old was Callie
just in the ground. Get used to it if you are going to.
He started to get to his feet.
Where are you going? the boy asked.
I'll find out how she's doing. Do you need anything? Water?
You're coming back?
He gave the boy a strange look. Of course.
What if something happens?
What would happen?
What if she wakes up?
Well, he said. An oily light glistened and slid thickly down the boy's eyeglasses. If she wakes up call for one of the nurses. That's what they're here for. Okay?
Okay.
But he did not move. He was thinking how little the boy betrayed in his face and how complicated that was. He stared past him then at the battered steel bars of the cot, at the rumpled folds of bedsheet sagging loosely there. The woman's throat where she lay with her head twisted sharply to one side was pulsing with a weird light. Thrumping shallow and rapid like the breast of a small bird. He glanced up. Her eyes were open.
Mom? the boy said. Then he smiled.
The woman turned her face and looked at her son.
Mason? she swallowed. Mason?
Hi Mom.
Oh god. God.
She was holding him and her good hand was in his hair.
I knew you were okay Mom. I knew it.
The old man watching them felt a thickness in his throat. He knew he should not be there. He glanced across the aisles and after a moment got quietly to his feet.
Mom, this is Arthur, the boy said. He drove me here.
The old man turned and curled his big-knuckled hands over the bedrail at the foot of her cot and stood uneasily there. He could feel himself blushing as she stared at him.
Her irises burned green and gold. I know you, she said. You dug us out.
He cleared his throat.
But she was staring hard at her son again and holding him fiercely. How did you find me? she asked him. Kat? Is she with you?
The boy shook his head.
Her feverish eyes absorbed this. Have you heard from her? Anything?
The boy glanced at the old man, adjusted his eyeglasses.
Nothing, he said.
The woman leaned back, the paper pillowcase at her neck crackled. She shut her eyes.
Don't worry Mom, we'll find her. She's probably at home.
Yes, she said, though something had gone out of her. What day is it?
Thursday.
Thursday. She opened her eyes and looked at the old man. It's Arthur?
He pulled the crate forward and sat close to her and nodded. Yes. Arthur Lear.
Thank you for finding my son, Arthur.
He could see then her deep exhaustion. She reached up and brushed a braid back from her face and the skin on her good hand was broken, the black-ringed fingernails ragged and torn. He said very gravely, You're welcome. Mason's a brave kid.
She coughed wetly and the corded knots in her throat stood out in stark relief.
Let me call a nurse, the old man said. He could feel the dappled bruises along his ribs aching steadily and somewhere just beyond that point a ghostly tingling. As if he had lost some part of himself he had not known of.
The woman reached her good hand out, stroked the hair of her son.
Mom you're crying again.
I'm not. She blew out her cheeks and glanced aside and her eyes when they met the old man's were glassy.
Mom?
Mm.
We'll find Kat. Don't worry.
I know we will, honey.
But she was slipping heavily back into herself now and the old man watched her struggle to keep her eyes in focus and he said to the boy, I think your mom needs to sleep.
And then she was asleep.
A nurse appeared, went away. A second nurse appeared, pulled gently back the bedsheet, dabbed at the bruises on the woman's belly. Her skin was lumped and yellow and brindled badly. The old man looked away. His left hand was still beside her pillow and he could feel her breath pass over his knuckles like smoke. At one point she opened her green eyes and held his gaze a moment and then she was gone again. He felt as if a lamp had been turned off, his skin left cooling.
He took his hand from off the bedsheets, the print of his palm impressed there. He thought how strange it was to encounter people you worried for. How it could happen anytime and how there was no way to prepare your heart for it.
While the woman slept Mason drifted like smoke around her, leaning over, fussing with her bedsheets. She was slighter than Lear remembered her or seemed that way asleep and in pain in that ward. He wondered how long she had been under the earth after he had pulled the boy out. Then he thought that the boy's sister must be out there still. He did not know if she would be hurt or not and he hoped not.
What are you going to do? Mason asked him. He sucked at his lips as if on something sour. His small hands gripping the metal railing of the bed.
What do you mean?
Mason shrugged.
Lear shook his head. I don't know, son.
Kat will find us, Mason said. If we go back home she will find us for sure.
Your sister?
She has a car.
I think your mom needs to stay here for a while.
Lear watched the boy's eyes darken at that and wondered just what was in him. He had found the gardener's body that morning while locking down the house. Last night the boy had squared his jaw and looked him in the eye and lied. He did not understand it. He did not know if the boy was in denial or feared to think about it or if some other darker reason were in him. The old man had covered the gardener's body with towels from the overturned linen basket by the dryer, not feeling anger but something else while standing there, a heavy sadness, a heavier regret. But now when he looked at Mason he did not feel it. He understood that in times of disaster what is true and what is untrue are sometimes one and the same. That the light we see by is a different light and the places we know change with that light. He thought:
The boy is trying to
live like any of us are trying to live and he did not do any harm.
After some time an attendant approached. And how's Mrs Mackenzie? he asked. He reached gently under her and folded back her sheet and adjusted the pillow and checked the IV.
Mackenzie? Lear said. You mean Clarke.
The attendant was a young man with very black hair fallen across one eye and he glanced at the clipboard in his hands. He wore jeans, a blue checkered shirt. Clarke? he said.
Clarke. Anna Mercia Clarke.
You sure? The attendant peered from Lear to Mason and back to Lear.
Yes, Mason said sturdily.
It's his mother. I'd say we're sure.
This goddamn manifest. They're supposed to be keeping records of who's where. They send us these lists but they don't have a clue.
What lists.
From the Records Desk. That's not how you found her?
No.
We just searched through the tents, said Mason.
Well. They got her down as Mackenzie so it wouldn't have helped anyway, I guess. How is she? Any changes?
No. She was awake for a bit.
She was awake? The attendant looked at her sharply and then at the old man. Has the doctor been by?
No.
I'll get him. Jesus.
The attendant turned but then he turned back and he gave Mason an open cardboard box. Somebody left this, he said. You're welcome to play with it.
Mason took it wordlessly. It was a chess box. Inside was a wafer-thin folding board, small magnetic pieces.
Then the attendant was gone.
Mason looked across expectantly and Lear grunted. Not me, son. I'm a little rusty.
I'll go easy on you.
You will, will you. You're awfully confident.
Just one game?
I don't think so.
Mason's spectacled eyes shifted over to his mother where she slept. His hands knotted between his knees. He put the chess board aside.
Hell
, Lear thought.
What is the matter with me.
Alright, son, he said. Give it here.
He fumbled with the carved figures and held out his fists and the boy tapped his left fist and pulled out the black pawn. He turned the board carefully and looked at the boy and together they set up the pieces and then he sat back and opened. They played slowly and they did not speak as they played. After a while Mason frowned and moved his queen.
Check, he said.
Lear moved his bishop.
Check, Mason said again.
Lear moved his king.
He saw a sheen of sweat in the woman's hairline and Mason looked across and then ran the corner of her bedsheet over her face. A few minutes later Lear was leaning on his fist, intrigued. Sawing at his chin with the back of his hand. The stubble rasping.
Now why would you do that? What are you up to?
If Kat isn't at home she might be at Leah's, Mason said softly. Or she might still be at her school. She could still be there.
Lear looked up, his hand hovering over the pieces. I guess so, he said.
He waited but Mason said nothing more and did not look at him. At last Lear took up his pawn and crossed the boy's queen and held two fingers on his chess piece and peered around it on all sides as if some opposing piece might be concealed there. At last he lifted his hand from the board.
Well, son, he said. Do your worst.
Mason slid his pawn to the outer edge of the board.
Lear looked from the board to the boy to the woman where she slept and back to the board. What was that?
What?
That.
Mason peered down as if he might have made some error. It's checkmate, he said.
You'd think I'd know when I'm being hustled. Was that even a little bit hard for you?
A little bit.
Sure it was.
Kat showed me that. She calls it Mireau's Gambit.
Lear shook his head. She's a good player?
Yes.
You're not so bad yourself.
Want to play another?
I don't. I really don't. You'll go easy on me again?
Yes.
Then I definitely don't.
The woman was muttering and then she fell back and slept on. Mason pulled off his eyeglasses, rubbed his eyes.
Lear reached across, dumped the pieces into the frayed cardboard case with a clatter and slid the board inside and folded the flaps shut. Through the tarp doorway figures were moving very slowly and the long shadows stretched their long fingers over the brown asphalt. He was thinking of the attendant who had not returned and of the error in the names and then he got to his feet and ducked his head to avoid the overhanging netting.
The boy peered up at him and he looked all at once like the boy he was.
I'm just going for a cigarette, Lear said. I won't be long.
Okay.
I mean it.
Okay.
He stepped out into the sunlight ducking his head and squinting and he walked slowly across the pavement. There was a smell of motor oil and softening apples and as he shouldered his way through the crowds of refugees he caught his hands trembling and he slipped them into his pockets. He was thinking of the attendant's words. If a Records Desk existed perhaps some evidence could be found of the boy's sister. He made his way to an open space lined with desks on all sides. Small tarped shelters where rows of tables had been set up. He could see on one side of the square a group of volunteers pulling bundles of clothes from black garbage bags, passing them across to the desperate crowds. Ahead of him a large handwritten sign indicated the Records Desk. The crush of the desperate was restless, thick, hot with the stench of unwashed bodies. The old man wiped his face, his neck. There were tarps and tents tacked up at strange angles and wide crooked lines of figures making their way between. He pushed his way in.