کتاب 03-14

14

There were too many people in the ward. Carol and Harper squeezed through a crowd that included Allie and the Neighbors girls and Michael and a few other Lookouts. Some of them were holding hands. Mike had stripped to the waist and a red slick—blood and sweat—glistened on his chest. With his head bowed and his eyes closed and his lips moving in silent prayer, he looked like an Age of Aquarius seeker in a sweat lodge. A girl sat on the floor hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing helplessly.

Candles crowded the counters and bristled around the sink, yet the room was still only dimly lit. Tom Storey was stretched out in one of the camp beds. In the shadows he could’ve been a discarded overcoat lying on top of the sheets. Don Lewiston stood at the head of the cot.

“Young people,” Harper said, as if she were decades older than Allie and Michael, and not a twenty-six-year-old who had finished school only four years ago. “Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done.” She had no idea if they had done anything, but it didn’t matter. It would be easier to steer them if they felt their important contributions had been recognized, if they believed they had made all the difference. “I have to ask everyone to leave now. We need air and quiet in this room.”

Allie had been crying. Her cheeks were flushed, but hot white lines traced the passage of tears. Her Captain America mask, grimy and battered, hung around her neck. She gave Harper a small, frightened nod and squeezed Michael’s hand. The two of them began to herd the others back into the waiting room, all without speaking.

Harper caught Michael’s upper arm, drew him back. In a low voice she said, “Take Carol, too. Please. Tell her you want to sing with her. Tell her Nick is upset and needs his aunt. Tell her whatever you like, but get her out of this room. She can’t be in here.”

Michael moved his head in the slightest gesture of assent, then called back, “Miss Carol? Will you come sing with us? Will you help us sing for Father Storey?”

“No,” Carol said. “I need to be with my father now. He needs me. I want him to know I’m here.”

“He will,” Michael said. “We’ll sing together and call him to the Bright with us. If you want him to feel you close, that’s how to do it. If you draw him into the Bright, he’ll know you’re with him, and he won’t be scared or in pain. Nothing hurts there. It’s the one thing we can do for him now.”

Carol trembled in nervous bursts. Harper wondered if she was in shock.

“Yes. Yes, Michael, I think you’re right. I think—”

Father Storey called out to them, in a voice that was good-humored but strained, as if he had been talking for a long time and his throat was worn out.

“Oh, Carol! When you sing I feel so in love with you my heart could crack.” He laughed, sarcastic, un-Tom-like laughter. “After that last song, my heart is cracked just like a window! And a good thing, too! It’s hard to see anything through stained glass.”

Carol stood transfixed, staring toward him, a fixed look of pain and astonishment on her face, as if someone had stuck a knife into her.

Don Lewiston cupped Father Storey’s skull, holding white cotton padding to his wound. Michael’s shirt was wadded up on the pillow, the flannel already stiffening with blood.

Father Storey’s eyes were open wide, each one looking in a different direction. One stared down and to the left. The other was pointed at the toes of his boots. He smiled with a certain low cunning.

“A thousand prayers every minute everywhere and what does God ever say back? Nothing! Because silence never lies. Silence is God’s final advantage. Silence is the purest form of harmony. Everyone ought to try it. Put a stone in your mouth instead of a lie. Put a rock on your tongue instead of gossip. Bury the liars and the wicked under stones until they say no more. More weight, hallelujah.” He took another little sip of air, and then whispered, “The devil is loose. I saw him tonight. I saw him come from the smoke. Then my head caved in and now it’s full of rocks. More weight, amen! Better watch out, Carol. This camp belongs to the devil, not to you. And he isn’t alone, either. Many serve him.”

Carol stared at her father with a horror-struck fascination. Father Storey licked his lips.

“I brought this on myself. I called weakness kindness and told lies when I should’ve kept a stone in my mouth. I did the worst thing a father can do. I had a favorite. I am so sorry, Carol. Please forgive me. I always loved Sarah best. It is right and proper that I should go to her now. Give me another stone. More weight. I’ve said enough, amen.”

He exhaled a long, dreamy breath and was silent.

Harper caught Carol’s eye. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s suffering from a subdural hematoma. If he’s talking nonsense, it’s because of the pressure on his brain.”

Carol looked back at her with a strange lack of recognition, as if they had never met before. “It isn’t nonsense. It’s a revelation! He’s doing what he’s always done. He’s showing us the way.” Carol reached out, blindly grasping backward, and took Michael’s hand. She squeezed his fingers. “We’ll sing. We’ll sing and call him to the Bright. We’ll give him all the light he needs to find his way back to us. And if he can’t come back to us—if he has to go—” Her voice choked. She coughed, and her shoulders shook spasmodically, and she went on: “—if he has to go, he’ll have our song to guide him and give him comfort.”

“Yes,” Harper said. “I think that’s just right. Go and sing for him now. He needs your strength. And sing for me, because I need your strength, too. I’m going to try and help him, but I’m scared. It would mean the world to me if you could raise your voices for both of us.”

Carol gave her a last, wondering look, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. It was perhaps the last kindness she ever showed Harper. A moment later she brushed through the curtain and was gone, taking the others with her.

Don Lewiston was getting ready to walk out, too, pulling his sleeves down to button them.

“Not you, Don,” Harper said. “You stay. I’ll need you.”

She circled behind the cot, taking Don Lewiston’s place behind Father Storey’s head. She gently lifted his skull in both hands. His silver hair was drenched in blood. She could feel the place behind his right ear where he had been struck, a warm wet lump, and another place, higher up, where there might’ve been a second blow.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Don said. “I didn’t get the whole tale. Mikey carried him into the camp, found him fackin’ half dead in the woods. I guess it was one of the convicts. That’s the early word. Ben is working on them right now.”

Working on them? What did that mean? Didn’t matter. Not now.

“And Father Storey couldn’t say anything about what happened?”

“Not that made sense. He said it was a judgment. He said it was what he had coming to him for protecting the wicked.”

“That’s the pressure on his brain. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying.”

“I know’t.”

She looked at Father Storey’s pupils, sniffed his lips, and caught an unsurprising whiff of vomit. She thought about what she had to do and felt nauseated herself. Not the notion of doing it—it had been a long time since she had been squeamish about blood—but at the thought of getting it wrong.

In the waiting room, she heard voices warming up, heard the Lookouts humming together, trying to find the same note.

“I need a razor to shave away the hair back here,” Harper said.

“Yes’m. I’ll get’cha one,” he said, and took a step toward the door.

“Don?”

“Yes’m?”

“Can you get your hands on a drill? Maybe from the wood shop? A power drill would be ideal, but I don’t imagine you’ll find one that has any charge. I’ll settle for one I can crank by hand.”

Don looked from her to Tom Storey—his white hair shampooed in red froth—and back.

“Oh, Jesus. Anything else?”

“Just hot water to sterilize the drill bit, please. Thank you.”

When he didn’t reply, she looked up to tell him that was all and that he should go, but he was already gone.

In the next room they began to sing.