The Book of Joby (104 page)

“He won’t be shoving me or Joby anywhere,” Laura said fiercely. “Or you either, I imagine,” she added more gently.

“Failing to get rid of us doesn’t mean he won’t just remove himself,” said Rose, remembering all too clearly how effortlessly he’d closed her out that morning.

“Have you got any good ideas then?” asked Laura. “I’m running pretty low.”

“That’s why I came to see you,” Rose said. “I can only think of one, and it’s
really
drastic. I didn’t even want to suggest it to him until I’d talked with you.”

Hawk sat inside the dripping cavern where his life had gone awry, feeling like an outcrop of the cold stone surrounding him. No one but himself ever came here anymore. Without Solomon’s incarnation spell, demons might be
lurking on the very wind. For those of the blood, gatherings of any kind were no longer safe.

Outside the cavern mouth, surf boomed more loudly on the rocks. The tide was coming in. He’d have to leave soon if he wanted to stay dry, but he couldn’t seem to move—a thought that summed up his entire existence better than any he’d come up with yet. He almost wrote it down, but even that much willful movement proved beyond him.

Solomon had always said that words had power to make sense of chaos, bring healing, defeat injustice. If so, Hawk was not half the bard he’d once imagined. The notepad on his lap was covered in line after line of writing, each one crossed out more angrily than the last. He’d stopped bothering to erase things hours ago. He’d stopped writing altogether some time later. The voices in his mind these days no longer murmured stories full of wonder and heroic daring, or even weighty consolation. Now they only whispered that his mentor would be dying soon, off in Santa Rosa, as everybody died in Taubolt now—except for Hawk, who deserved no such release.

The voices whispered now that those who’d said such reassuring things to him after Jupiter and Sky had died were merely being “nice” and, having discharged that obligation, only wished to leave both Hawk and what he’d done behind them. Hawk had several times caught Joby and GB coming out of Joby’s inn, or wandering from the woods together. He had no idea what they might be doing, but it was clear that in GB Joby had found some new, and doubtless more enjoyable, “project” to occupy his time. One with more potential than Hawk could hope to offer anymore. Even Rose spent days or weeks away from him up on the Garden Coast now. Why sit here in some cave, after all, when
she
could be so
useful
elsewhere? Hawk’s inner voices said that even Rose found him easier to take now at a distance. And that was for the best. Hawk felt like a filthy hand that left dark, repellent smudges on any clean surface it touched. It was less painful to be alone than to be caught in anyone’s attention being
this.

Such a short while back, he’d thought nothing could be worse than all the grief and shame and anger he’d been feeling. Now Hawk felt nothing anymore at all, which was proving even more unbearable. All around him people grieved, and cried, and comforted one another, while he, able to let nothing in or out, felt only the hopeless void. In Hawk’s mind there was a janitor now, who came each day to sweep away the bodies without a hint of feeling. Something had strangled his heart, and with nothing left alive inside him, it seemed cruel that he must go on living anyway.

His attention was pried from this cesspool by the sound of someone’s sloshing approach outside. When Rose’s face peered through the cavern’s entrance, Hawk remained utterly still, more from inertia than any particular will to hide. But when her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she found him and came inside.

“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly. “The tide is more than halfway in, and everyone’s worried sick about you.”

He’d grown so still that it was hard to talk but he tried as he would not have done for anyone but Rose. “Now you can tell them I’m all right.”

“Are you?” she asked softly.

What was he supposed to say?

She glanced at the pad in his lap, and asked, “Are you writing?”

“No.”

Seeing the hurt in her face, Hawk was surprised to discover that he could, in fact, still feel something. The things coming from his mouth only shamed him more.

“Hawk,” Rose said uncertainly. “You’re obviously not okay.”

You’re not the way we want you anymore.

“I’m worried about you,” she said when Hawk did not reply. “Everyone is.”

You’re a burden to everyone now.

“Hawk, please talk to me.”

A surly, boorish burden . . . You’re offending her.

“What would you like me to say?” Hawk murmured.

“Hawk,” she sighed, coming to sit down beside him, “people can get lost in grief. It can bang them up so hard they can’t find an exit, and you’ve been through too much.”

You’re not as strong as all the others . . . You can’t handle this like they can.

Rose reached out and took his hands in hers.
Your hands are clammy and covered in grit . . . She’s repulsed but she won’t tell you so . . .
“You’ve got to do something to break out of this.”

They can’t put up with your behavior anymore.

“Your mother and I were talking,”
Even your mother is talking behind your back . . . You’re breaking her heart . . . filling her life with grief . . .
, “and we both think maybe this place is the problem. I mean, Taubolt’s under attack, and you know as well as I do that things are probably just going to get worse for quite a while.”
They’re all dealing with lots of bigger problems than your own . . . If you were just grown-up enough to see that . . .
“You haven’t even had a chance to get your head above water before the next wave hits, and if you stay here, it’s
just likely to go on that way. We both think maybe you should leave for a while.”
You should leave.
“I’ll miss you terribly, but if you can put some distance between yourself and all this, maybe it would help you heal. I don’t think Taubolt’s going to be very good for that now,” she said, giving his hands a squeeze.

You should leave.

“You could stay with your grandparents for a month or two.”

You should leave.

“Even Joby thinks it might be a good idea.”

There it was.
Even Joby wants you out of the way while they deal with Taubolt’s real problems.
Hawk wondered whether Joby had consulted GB about it too.

“Hawk, please say something. You’re scaring me with all this silence.”

You’re scaring her . . . You should leave.

In the darkness behind his eyes, Hawk watched his fingers leaving gouges in the muddy rim as he lost his grip at last, and plummeted into the bottomless abyss he’d been staring into all this time. . . . He’d lost her.

“You’re right,” he said tonelessly. “I’ll go.”

He found that he could move now, if not much faster than honey over ice. He got up without a word and headed for the cave mouth, unable even to look back.

“The moment is upon us,” Lucifer said briskly as the triangle appeared. “I’ve just pried Joby’s eyes open. He’s headed up to see her now. Tique, you stay with him until he gets there. He was quite upset, of course, and left me like the proverbial bat out of hell in that jalopy of his. I don’t want him driving into a ditch or something on the way. Timing will be crucial here.”

Tique nodded sharply before vanishing.

“Trephila,” Lucifer continued, “go use whatever time remains to get Laura as agitated as possible. Help her spill some milk or break some dishes. Use whatever’s close at hand, and no need to be subtle. Since she’s still ignorant of our existence, she’s not likely to suspect anything unless you incarnate in her face.”

Trephila vanished with a smile.

“Eurodia, you will stay with me in case our machinery should require any adjustment in motion. Kallaystra will have whipped the boy’s wounded feelings into heat by now, but he mustn’t arrive until it’s all over but the crying. If this goes right, it should produce quite a blast.” He actually smiled. “In the end, it’s always about
timing.
”

Joby took another corner much too fast, and almost lost control. What was left of his rational mind kept telling him to slow down, but the rest of him was no longer listening. He needed to hear Laura tell him that it wasn’t true—more, perhaps, than he needed to live through this if it was. That embattled little corner of rational mind kept insisting that it couldn’t be true—that she’d never have done this to him—or to Hawk. But after GB’s innocent misapprehension, Joby had done the math again and again in his mind, and the answer just kept coming up the same. He could not believe he’d failed to see it for so long, except that Hawk already had a father! Everyone had talked about him, on and on: the abusive, alcoholic,
abandoning bastard.
It made Joby want to bash his own forehead on the steering wheel.

He arrived at last, crunched to a halt on the gravel drive beside her house, and bounded up the stairs. But as he raised his hand to knock, fear stayed his arm. What if it were true? How could he face it? He still hadn’t knocked when Laura opened the door, doubtless having heard him on the stairs.

“Joby!” she said. “What’s . . . Is something wrong? You look—What’s happened?”

Seeing no way to ease into it, he asked, “Was Sandy Hawk’s real father?”

Laura’s mouth fell slightly open as panic changed her face. “How did you . . .”

“Oh God,” he groaned, turning to sit down on her stairs before his legs gave way.
“Oh my God!”
he moaned again, dropping his face into his hands, weak with helpless grief. “How could you do this?” he whispered inconsolably. “To any of us?”

When she didn’t answer, he turned back to find her clinging to the door frame, pale and shaking with emotion. “What was I supposed to do?” she pleaded roughly. “Joby, you were headed off to Berkeley with high honors, that whole bright future ahead of you. Was I supposed to crush all that because one night I’d gotten it into my head to seduce you? I loved you more than that!”

Her eyes had filled with tears, but Joby just felt numb with disbelief. “You
loved
me?” he demanded. “So you never let me know I had a
son
? What about all those things you told me at the hospital? How you just wanted all of me—the broken parts and all the rest? What a load of crap! You asked
me
to come out of hiding, and I did! How long did
you
plan to go on hiding this
little detail
from
me
? Forever? What about Hawk? Did you love
him
too much to let him know he had a father?”